Surviving NaNoWriMo Tip #1

It's so easy to fall out of love with your NaNoWriMo novel. At the beginning of the month, you're psyched, you're ready to embark on a thirty day journey to finishing a novel that has been cooking in your brain for quite some time now.

You may have a massive outline or you may be just winging it. How ever you are planning to churn out 50,000 thousand word in 1 month, that is up to you, but you can't help if you fall out of love with your novel can you?

I'll admit that I was pretty proud of my novel at the beginning of the month. It is one of the first contemporary novels that I have gotten past 10,000 words on. Also it has romance, adventure, and the characters really are growing into their shoes, so to speak.

But then I get anxious.

There are so many things that I had planned for this novel. The plot was supposed to go one way when it went another, and I can't go back and fix anything, because during NaNoWriMo you're supposed to keep on trucking and basically you have to stick a shoe in your inner editor's mouth.

This is hard, especially for perfectionist such as me and millions of other writers out there. But in the words of John Green, it's okay to suck during November.

It took me a long time to realize that, but now I see clearly. *Cue the music*

Sometimes the raw writing can be better than revised writing. It's the words that comes straight from the heart, from your mind. They're fresh and great and wonderful and beautiful. Once they're on your paper or your Word document, they're there forever. You won't erase them, you can't. Because if you want to be on top, you have to keep moving a long.

If you have fallen out of love with your characters or your novel, I can't really tell you how to fall in love with them again.

But I can say that once you keep working with them, to improve your relationship, so to speak, you'll learn to like them. You'll learn to except them for all their flaws and imperfections. And then you won't be able to get them out of your mind. They'll hypnotize you, they'll take over you, until you have to love them.

My only advice to you, I guess, is to keep writing. I know you might have heard this advice in millions of other places, but it's probably the best advice you'll ever receive.

Keep writing.

And it doesn't matter if you write 3 words or 200 words or 1,000 words or 4,000 words a day. Every word you write, is progress. Every word you write because you one step closer to your goal.

Soon, December will be here and you can set that inner editor free.

Good luck everyone!