nanowrimo writing tips

NaNoWriMo Tips: Your Writer’s Toolbox

Here on Writers on the Grove, we’ve been adding articles to help you add to your writer’s toolbox. A writer’s toolbox is a collection of reference material that helps the writer write.

Your writer’s toolbox could be digital, files stored in a folder on your computer. Or it could be in a file folder grouped by type of reference. Or in a notebook, the preferred method of many writers, with tabs segregating the various reference types.

Your writer’s toolbox isn’t limited to a single project, novel, or writing type. It is a reference guide to support your writing needs such as a list of common measurement conversions from metric to imperial, forms and templates for character and worldbuilding development, descriptions of genres and themes, cheat sheets, and whatever you need to keep you writing.

Whatever your method of storage, before, during, and after NaNoWriMo is the time to put that toolbox in order to help you write your stories.

What Goes Into Your Writer’s Toolbox

What goes into your writer’s toolbox? Anything that helps you write. Here are some examples:

Peter Halasz’s Writing Cheatsheet is a tightly packed collection of plot and character guides, specifics, and breakdowns.
Forms for character descriptions and personality traits.
Forms for place/location descriptions.
Forms for worldbuilding.
Plot and storyboarding guides and forms.
Notes from writing workshops and classes.
Pictures of places and characters.
Mind mapping forms.
Genre descriptions.
References that list reference material such as geometric shapes, how to describe and critic art, names and descriptions of shoe typing techniques, a reference guide for typical travel times for various forms of transportation, hair colors and hair style descriptions and names, measurement conversion charts, color names, whatever it is that you can flip to and glance at for the answer, and keep writing.

Some writers create a book for each project they are writing. Others keep one book as a reference guide and keep adding to it as they learn new writing techniques and find references.

It is your writer’s toolbox, and you get to choose whatever tools you need in your kit to keep you going through all your writing projects.

You can find more writing tips, NaNoWriMo prompts, and writing tips for NaNoWriMo on our Writers in the Grove site.

NaNoWriMo Tips: Rules for Writing Fiction from the Best

The Guardian newspaper rounded up advice from top authors with rules for writing fiction. This is a must read.

The advice can be harsh but it represents decades of writing, editing, and publishing for many of these authors.

The authors include Elmore Leonard, Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Helen Dunmore, Geoff Dyer, Anne Enright, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Esther Freud, Neil Gaiman, David Hare, PD James, and AL Kennedy.

You can find more writing tips, NaNoWriMo prompts, and writing tips for NaNoWriMo on our Writers in the Grove site.

NaNoWriMo Tips: Don’t Censor Yourself

As you prepare and work through NaNoWriMo, don’t censor yourself. Write down all your ideas.

Sure, some of the ideas will be whoppers, out there, spinning around out of control, but one idea leads to another and another, and who knows where your thoughts will take you if you ignore your inner censor and editor and let your mind wander through the possibilities.

Write them all down. It might not make sense now, but in a few days or weeks, it might be THE idea that changes everything.

You can find more writing tips, NaNoWriMo prompts, and writing tips for NaNoWriMo on our Writers in the Grove site.

NaNoWriMo Tips: Tell the Story Only You Can Tell

One NaNoWriMo year I had a great idea for a novel. It was set in Northern Wisconsin, closely tied to my family history research. I started writing, so excited about the story, then realized I knew nothing about the geographic area, the time, the society, nothing beyond the basics of my genealogy research. I thought I could make it up but realized that the lack of information was getting in my way as every day of writing progressed. Frustrated, I whined to my husband and he gave me this wise advice that I’m sure you’ve never heard before: Write what you know.

What did I know? Or better yet, where did I know? I knew Seattle. I lead photo tours through Seattle for over a decade. I grew up there. I’ve researched the history, architecture, politics, and culture of the city on Elliott Bay. I’m fascinated with the wild west, logging and fishing world my family helped create once they left Wisconsin. As much as I wanted to tell the story closer to the truth, once I shifted the story to Seattle, it blossomed. I couldn’t stop writing. I was on fire. Memories were unlocked I hadn’t considered for more than thirty years about the place I call my home even though I haven’t lived there for twenty years.

I’d like to change the writing clique to better suit the advice from author Neil Gaiman:

Start telling the stories only you can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you and there’ll always be smarter writers than you. There will always be people who are much better doing this or doing that – but you are the only you.

Put aside all the teaching, workshops, books, and myths you’ve heard about writing. Set aside your own preconceived notions about what you think you should write.

As you plow through NaNoWriMo, remember that you are the only you, and only you can tell the story your way, uniquely yours.

You can find more writing tips, NaNoWriMo prompts, and writing tips for NaNoWriMo on our Writers in the Grove site.

NaNoWriMo Tips: Unleash Your Descriptive Inner Voice

As you work your way through NaNoWriMo and your novel, memoir, or whatever writing you choose during the November writing sprint, unleash your inner descriptive voice and make your sentences more interesting by adding more descriptors. Look for words or phrases that paint a picture.

The ball hit the window.

The black and white soccer ball Bob kicked with all his might hit the Peterson’s large front picture window with a dull thud.

Close your eyes and picture the scene. Pay attention to all your senses. Can you hear the sound Bob might make as he kicked the ball? Can you hear the thud of the window rebounding from the collision? Can you see Bob? Is he dripping with sweat or have glowing red cheeks from the exertion?

Let your imagination become a paint brush with strokes that put us in the middle of the action, feeling everything you do in the moment.

You can find more writing tips, NaNoWriMo prompts, and writing tips for NaNoWriMo on our Writers in the Grove site.

NaNoWriMo Tips: Avoid the Blank Page Woes

During NaNoWriMo, you will be writing every day. Returning over and over again to a blank screen or page can be intimidating.

Don’t let the blank page get in your way. Put the date at the top of the page and say out loud, “I’ve already started the page. It isn’t blank!”

Then start writing. One obstacle down.

You can find more writing tips, NaNoWriMo prompts, and writing tips for NaNoWriMo on our Writers in the Grove site.

NaNoWriMo Tips: Verifying Word Counts

Some of the members of Writers in the Grove participating in NaNoWriMo have the same concerns as others about the process of verifying their month long writing word counts. There is much fear about copying and pasting their writing into a word count verification app or program and trusting that their words won’t be stolen.

Word count verification is required by NaNoWriMo by the end of November to verify that you have written the required number of words in order to qualify for completion of your goal, and the rewards of winning offered by NaNoWriMo and its sponsors.

Let’s make this very clear from the start. The official NaNoWriMo word count verifier does not save your words. It is an online took that merely checks spaces between words and average word lengths to estimate a word count, then deletes your words. Again, it does not save your words nor store them.

The same is true for most word count verifiers online.

With your confidence restored, let’s look at how to estimate your word count for handwritten or manually typed content, and explore your options for submitting randomly generated words for your word count verification. Don’t forget, we’ve covered how to track your word count during NaNoWriMo a few weeks ago.

Calculating Handwritten or Manually Typed Word Counts

There is another challenge facing NaNoWriMo participants. What if you write by hand, not entering your story onto a computer. There are still ways to estimate your word count. NaNoWriMo recommends having a friend verify the numbers you’ve written by counting them manually, a tedious labor of love, then use a random text generator to submit the representation of that number of words.

There are still a number of writers that avoid computers, writing on manual or electric typewriters. They will either estimate their word counts using the examples below or scan the pages and have them converted to text with an OCR program.

Before we get to examples of how to use random text generators for submitting your word count to NaNoWriMo, here are some ways to estimate your word count.

A handwritten page, single spaced, is generally estimated to represent 100 words.
Between 3 and 4 single spaced handwritten pages represents a single typed page.
A single spaced typed page represents approximately 700 words in 10pt font, 535 in 12pt font.
Count the number of words on each of 10 lines of writing. Average the words per line and then count the number of handwritten lines and multiple that number by the average number of words per line.
If the handwritten or typed content is doubled spaced, or you are using wide rule on handwritten paper, adjust the estimates accordingly.

To estimate typed word counts by page, the Word Counter blog calculates 50,000 words is 100 pages single spaced, 200 pages double spaced.

Let’s look at the various options for submitting your word count for verification using random word generators.

Scrivener Random Words Compile

If you are using Scrivener, use the NaNoWriMo Scrivener Project Template released every year. When you are ready to verify your word count for NaNoWriMo, go to File > Compile.

There you will find the custom compile setting that will compile and save your manuscript to a text file with all of the letters converted to garbage words like “xxxx yxyyx zyxxxxxxy, yyzy zzxxyxy.”

Simply copy the nonsense words from the file and paste those in. They represent a very close approximation of your actual words, replacing each letter with another.

Random Text Generators

The popular Lorem Ipsum random word generator is commonly used to generate your estimated word count. Select words and enter the number of words to generate the randomized words.

By tradition, the random words generated are in Latin, but there are many other random text generators you may use to create your word count material for verification. Some offer randomized words in other languages and offer quotes from celebrity shows and characters including Doctor Who, The Simpsons, Chuck Norris, and Arnold Schwarzenegger movies.

A favorite is the Blippity Fling-Flang random word generator, spilling forth this delightful nonsense to your word count number:

Zap tang hum jingle blappity bleewhack, bam dingle abracadabra dee bleepity wuggleshnozzle wubble. Zip loo woggle ting blangity blippity rizzle dongleslap? Shnozzle floo hum crungle roo slap?

Weeble! Bam zunkity flee shnizzle shnoz bam blap. Bluppity slop blung!

Bam shnazzy zingle blop zung zap tingle. Ha dang Moe…flupping blobbing bladong. Dizzle slop flangity ho blobdabba???

The only problem with using random text generators is that they often replace your words with words that are longer or shorter than the ones you wrote. According to NaNoWriMo representatives, their word count generator doesn’t measure word length but counts spaces between words, so this shouldn’t matter, but keep this in mind if your word count is drastically different from the verified number.

Verify Early

Many a NaNoWriMo writer waited until the last few hours of November 30 to verify their word count, using every minute to reach their 50,000 word goal. But experienced NaNoWriMo participants know to verify their word count early, even so much as a few days before the last day of the month.

Word counters are not perfect. Each program uses a different formula to generate their word counts. Your program and calculations may tell you that you’ve written 50,285 words but run it through NaNoWriMo’s word count verifier and you might find out you wrote only 49,892 words, and find yourself scrambling to add the last couple hundred.

Whether or not you are close to the 50K goal, consider verifying your word count on November 28. This way, you will know if you are over or under the count, and how hard you have to work on those last two days to reach your goal.

For more information on tracking your word count daily and throughout the year, check out our article on word trackers.

You can find more writing tips, NaNoWriMo prompts, and writing tips for NaNoWriMo on our Writers in the Grove site.

NaNoWriMo Tips: Reverse the Writing Order

One of the challenges in NaNoWriMo is that you may have the start of your novel set, most of the plot points on an outline, but what about the ending? Do you know where this thing ends?

Write your ending first.

Why not? Take a writing session and write the last scene, chapter, or maybe the last two or three chapters. Take your story to the end to see what happens, then start from the beginning.

You might discover that the plot outline you carefully planned out needs to be shifted around, the journey changed as you’ve decided to take this in a new direction. Or that you will have to add characters or remove them, or change other parts of the story to make it tie up with the ending you’ve written.

You can always edit and change the ending later, but knowing your destination might help you get there sooner, and enjoy the journey better.

You can find more writing tips, NaNoWriMo prompts, and writing tips for NaNoWriMo on our Writers in the Grove site.

NaNoWriMo Tips: Avoid Punctuation Police

Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.
Kurt Vonnegut

This is wise advice, especially during NaNoWriMo. Don’t let the punctuation get in your way. Fussing over a comma, period, quote mark, colon, and semi-colon as you hammer out your story slows you down.

Fix all the punctuation in December. Then you can learn all about the rules and regulations of English punctuation and use it right.

You can find more writing tips, NaNoWriMo prompts, and writing tips for NaNoWriMo on our Writers in the Grove site.

NaNoWriMo Tips: Write Your Draft Fast

Get through a draft as quickly as possible. Hard to know the shape of the thing until you have a draft. Literally, when I wrote the last page of my first draft of Lincoln’s Melancholy I thought, Oh, shit, now I get the shape of this. But I had wasted years, literally years, writing and re-writing the first third to first half. The old writer’s rule applies: Have the courage to write badly.
Joshua Wolf Shenk

You can find more writing tips, NaNoWriMo prompts, and writing tips for NaNoWriMo on our Writers in the Grove site.