How To Win At NaNoWriMo

Photo credit: Alex Stoddard For those of you who don't know what NaNoWriMo is, it's National Novel Writing Month: for the month of November anyone and everyone who has a story inside of them is encouraged to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.
Insane, right?!
Yes. But that's okay, because you have to be insane to be a writer--it's part of the job description. (I DID write a novel about an alternate universe with invisible animal companions and floating cities and all sorts of other crazy fun stuff. It's fun to be a writer, because in your world you can DO WHATEVER YOU WANT WITH IT.)
I recently tweeted how NaNoWriMo changed my life last year, because it forced me to really buckle down and WRITE A DAMN NOVEL instead of talking about or getting 10 pages in and becoming bored. 
And here I am a year later, about to release my debut "The Charismatics" in less than two months, and it is a surreal feeling. But it's a true testament to the phrase, if I can do it, so can YOU.
This tweet also led to a fantastic interview with Erik Marshall, Ph.D. over at his WET Podcast: Writing, Education and Technology when he read it and wanted to know more. We talked for over an hour about HOW NaNoWriMo changed my life so that I switched careers, how I managed to write a novel in a month (and "The Charismatics" in two months this summer), beta readers, writing sex scenes, and some details about my book, of course! Check out the audio interview here, and the video will be posted in the next few days.
I'm not doing NaNoWriMo this year, because I'll be writing the fifth and final draft of my novel once I get it back from my editor, Lauren Wise at Midnight Publishing with her thoughts. But I still wanted to give my thoughts on how to *win* at NaNoWriMo.
 
So read, laugh, enjoy. And you might think I'm not serious about these ... but I am DEAD serious. Because I speak from experience. (Like I said ... all writers are insane.)
1. Break up with your significant other for the whole month of November.
2. If you don't want to break up with them, then inform them that they won't be seeing you (awake) for the next 30 days.
3. Put your local pizza place's number in your speed-dial.
4. Tip your pizza delivery person generously, so that when you call them at three a.m. shouting "MY WORD COUNT IS 3,059 AND I NEED PIZZA AND THE CHARACTERS WHO DON'T REALLY EXIST ARE FIGHTING MY DECISIONS" they will *actually* risk showing up at your house again.
5. Get used to your character's fighting your decisions and doing their own thing .
6. Learn to sleep and type at the same time.
7. Also learn to control your dreams, so that you can outline your next scene if you *do* fall asleep on your keyboard in a moment of human weakness.
8. Learn to shower in two minutes or less, while using the steam on the shower door to write out the outline to your next scene.
9. Sex is out of the question (unless your partner is okay with discussing various character names for your novel's love interest while the deed is done, and they let you practice calling them said names to see which one sounds the sexiest).
10. Plan on not doing anything that you enjoy for 30 days, including but not limited to binge-watching Netflix series, having any contact with friends/family for longer than one minute in which you text them, "I'M WRITING, I'M STILL WRITING AND WILL ALWAYS BE WRITING FOR THE REST OF TIME UNTIL I REACH MY WORD COUNT FOR THE DAY AND THEN IT WILL START UP TOMORROW AND I MISS THE FEELING OF SUNLIGHT ON MY SKIN AND I'M NOT SURE WHEN THE LAST TIME I SHOWERED WAS BUT IT WAS A WHILE AGO BUT I'M STILL ALIVE SO THAT'S GOOD LOVE YOU BYE."  

So there you go, my tried and true methods. Go forth my little NaNoWriMers, and WIN!
As always, keep writing and keep dreaming!
Like what you read? Subscribe to my blog/newsletter!