We’re now 16 days away from November 1st. Writers all over the world are eagerly awaiting 12:01am to kick off their novels in the spirit of NaNoWriMo. There are tons of tips and tricks out there for writers attempting to win NaNoWriMo. Tips that keep you thinking on your toes and make writing life easier, tricks to keep your word count from suffering, and gizmos like Write or Die that help you keep the words flowing!
So tips are up first. 5 tips that I’ve found to help writers participating in NaNoWriMo:
- Write every day! Even if you only manage to get 5 words down one day, it’ll help you from putting it off the task of writing!
- Give yourself a little reward for reaching your word count goal each day. (Mine’s a smiley sticker on my calendar!) You can also reverse this and say, if you don’t make your word count for the day, you have to scrub the kitchen floor.
- Set a BIG reward for the end of the month. Something that you’ve wanted or wanted to do, and then give it to yourself if you win.
- Put together a Survival Kit for the month of November. Add things like your favorite, non-messy, snacks; a cookbook of easy and fast recipes; noveling supplies; a plot-ninja box; comfy clothes and anything else you think you’d need for the month.
- Outline or plan ahead. Have some idea about what you want to write about. It’ll help when you get stuck on ideas in the middle of November.
Here’s a few tricks to keep you going and to boost your word count! Remember, your NaNoWriMo novel is a rough draft, you can add, subtract and edit anything in December.
- Never use contractions. Ever.
- Sex scenes. They work, honestly.
- Have a character who speaks a foreign language, so you have to translate everything.
- Write dream sequences every time one of your characters sleeps. Long dream sequences which make no sense.
- DO NOT DELETE, italicize. When you’re writing, do not delete anything! Capitalize it, italicize it, or if it really bothers you, turn the font color white. It’s a rough draft, and it can be dealt with at a later time, like in December!
There are a few gizmos out there designed to help writers. The first one I’d like to talk about is the famous Write or Die web application. This is a great motivator for those who have some trouble writing:
“Write or Die is a web application that encourages writing by punishing the tendency to avoid writing. Start typing in the box. As long as you keep typing, you’re fine, but once you stop typing, you have a grace period of a certain number of seconds and then there are consequences….
The idea is to instill in the would-be writer with a fear of not writing. We do this by employing principles taught in Introduction to Psychology. Anyone remember Operant Conditioning and Negative Reinforcement?
Negative Reinforcement “strengthens a behavior because a negative condition is stopped or avoided as a consequence of the behavior.”
Consequences:
- Gentle Mode: A certain amount of time after you stop writing, a box will pop up, gently reminding you to continue writing.
- Normal Mode: If you persistently avoid writing, you will be played a most unpleasant sound. The sound will stop if and only if you continue to write.
- Kamikaze Mode: Keep Writing or Your Work Will Unwrite Itself
These consequences will persist until your preset conditions have been met (that is, your time is up or you’ve written you wordcount goal or both).”
Write or Die isn’t the only web app that helps you write. One Word.com has a similar idea, a simple text box in a web browser. They give you one word and 60 seconds to write all that comes to mind. The word changes from day to day, and you have the option of saving what you’ve written to to the site. This page is a great way to warm up to writing each day.
The next little gizmo I want to share with you is Wolfram Alpha. It’s a knowledge engine, and well, it’s a great tool for writers. Say you’re writing a story about Food and Nutrition, and you wanted to know how many calories are in a sweet potato… Well, let’s ask Wolfram. How many calories are in a sweet potato? If you looked at the page, you’ll see that it responded with more information than we asked for! Not only did it give us calories, but the nutritional facts and values as well. The best part about Wolfram is that you can ask it anything! Even your current location. It will do wonders for your research. Trust me.
NaNoWriMo is just around the corner! Take these ideas and run with them. Write right, and get cracking on your NaNo ideas!
The idea is to instill in the would-be writer with a fear of not writing. We do this by employing principles taught in Introduction to Psychology. Anyone remember Operant Conditioning and Negative Reinforcement?
Negative Reinforcement “strengthens a behavior because a negative condition is stopped or avoided as a consequence of the behavior.”
Consequences:
- Gentle Mode: A certain amount of time after you stop writing, a box will pop up, gently reminding you to continue writing.
- Normal Mode: If you persistently avoid writing, you will be played a most unpleasant sound. The sound will stop if and only if you continue to write.
- Kamikaze Mode: Keep Writing or Your Work Will Unwrite Itself
These consequences will persist until your preset conditions have been met (that is, your time is up or you’ve written you wordcount goal or both)
