Happy Halloween — and more importantly, happy Nanowrimo Eve!

With the very best month of the year just hours away, the anxiety is setting in for many. What, you may wonder, in the name of all that is good, were you thinking signing up for this thing? Worse still, all anyone will tell you is to relax, have fun, and just put one word in front of the other. Since you weren’t planning writing your novel backwards, this is not very helpful advice. And there is nothing less relaxing and fun than being told to have fun and relax.

This year will be my 12^th Nanowrimo, and I can tell you right now I am the opposite of relaxed. I’ve got a very half-baked idea loaded with characters I’m iffy about and themes I can’t quite put into words. The entire structure of the novel is a gigantic experiment that I have a feeling I’m going to severely regret, and I have scrapped and re-brainstormed the explanation for the plot at least three times. I am not relaxed.

But I’m also not even slightly worried. These things will work themselves out, I know. Whatever happens, words are going to end up on the page. And along the way, here are a few pieces of Nanowrimo advice I know will actually help – and they might help you too.

Word sprints

A word sprint is a short, timed writing challenge, usually done simultaneously by a group of people. Everyone sets a timer and reports back at the end of five, ten, or fifteen minutes on how much they wrote. But even when you’re not doing them as a group, sprints are a useful tool for not only getting your daily words down, but getting into the spirit of Nanowrimo.

As I’ve said before, Nanowrimo is not about writing a good novel. It’s about getting words down on the page, free of the burden of wondering whether or not they’re good enough to be there. It’s about putting your inner editor on a 30-day leave of absence and giving yourself permission to create something simply for the sake of creating it.

Word sprints are the same way. You’re not timing yourself to see what your normal, average writing pace is – you’re supposed to be racing the clock. And it’s pretty easy to get into that groove when you’re only doing it for five or ten minutes at a time. You might be surprised just how much you’re able to write during a word sprint. They’re a great way to kick off a writing session, or get through all your words for the day in short bursts, especially on days when you’re feeling stagnated. Every couple of hours, set a timer for somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes and just write as much as you possibly can. It’ll be December before you know it.

Small, dry snacks

Writing snacks are important, not because you will be hungry during the writing process, but because you will tell yourself you are hungry and use “just getting up to grab a quick snack” to give yourself a thoroughly undeserved break from writing. You just wrote 57 words and spent 20 minutes on a Wikipedia black hole that originated from a fact you didn’t even really need in the first place. You are not starving, exhausted, or unable to go on. But speaking as someone who is very, very snack-motivated, it never hurts to give yourself the tiny rewards your brain is craving.

After much research, I have determined that the ideal qualities for a writing snack are:

1. Comes in small, bite-sized chunks
2. Dry but not crumbly, and carrying little to no residue, so I don’t have to get up and wash my hands before going back to typing
3. Healthy enough that I can justify eating an obscene quantity of them in one sitting

Dried fruit is probably the best option I have found thus far (I like dried apple slices). Grapes and berries work well too, but may not be in season this time of year depending on where you live. If you have a go-to writing snack, please leave a comment and let me know what it is. Whatever you find, keep some of it next to you during writing sessions where you’re having trouble staying focused, and give yourself a bite every X number of words (the interval will depend on your normal writing pace; for me 500 is a good number). It helps a lot.

Warmups

Have you ever done sports? Have you ever done a sport that did not involve a warmup taking at least ten minutes before every single practice? I bet not, because as any athlete will tell you, that’d be dumb as hell. Skipping your warmup is a one-way ticket to injuryville. Skipping your warmup when you’re writing isn’t quite as dire, but it certainly doesn’t help. Here’s a few ideas:

• Pick a word from the last sentence you wrote in your current draft. Use that word as a prompt and freewrite for five minutes.
• Put on your writing playlist while you stretch, drink coffee, or do chores.
• Doodle things from your novel for 5-10 minute – characters, scenery, important objects, etc.
• Spend 10 minutes looking for a new song to add to your novel playlist.
• Open your draft side-by-side with a blank word document, and re-type the last 250 words you wrote (this one is great if you have a hard time shutting down your inner editor! Give yourself permission to make minor changes during this exercise to give that editing instinct a chance to shine before you banish it again).

Give each of these a shot and see if you can identify one that leaves you feeling more creatively energized than it found you. Then build 5-10 minutes into your writing routine to do that activity before you start every day. You’ll find your writing session becomes vastly more productive.

Community

I’ve said it a million times and I’ll say it again: one of the best things about Nanowrimo is the community that surrounds it. It’s the thing that turns writing a novel in a month from a stressful stretch goal into a fun and achievable challenge. There are a million ways to engage with that community for support, encouragement, motivation, and practical assistance. Here are a few.

• See if your region has write-ins or word sprints planned. It’s a lot easier to bang out your daily word count if you put yourself in a setting where the social expectation is that you sit quietly and bang out your daily word count. Make peer pressure work for you. (But for real, write-ins are really fun. Try one.)
• Get help solving your problems in the forums. Specifically, check out the Story Development and Reference Desk forums. These are places you can go to track down an obscure fact that’s eluding you (and costing you hundreds of hours of research time that could be writing time) or crowdsource the patching up of a plot hole. The Reaching 50k forum is also full of fantastic general tips and support for when your brain just will not write.
• During your breaks, read a pep talk. Every year, Nanowrimo gets a handful of published (and often pretty famous) authors to write pep talks for participants, and they’re all saved in the archive I just linked. If you’ve ever read a book in your life, an author you like is probably in there somewhere. The pep talks are loaded with not only inspiration and motivational words, but often fascinating insights into other writers’ processes, as well as practical tips that might help you as well.

Have you done Nanowrimo before? Share your tips & advice for first-timers in the comments!

Happy writing, and good luck this November!