Eleven Easy Ways to Blow NaNo

This article was originally written for Fairfield County Writers, now Full Coverage Writers.

O joy, o rapture! National Novel Writing Month is coming! Ah, NaNoWriMo! That ebullient time when even the most sensible among us take up caffeine and candy, give up on exercise and family, and face off against that most formidable opponent--our lazy procrastinating selves.

Some exist, however, that don't care about NaNo. Maybe you're one of them. Perhaps you've won enough--or you've never won, and you don't want to break that streak now. Very good, that's perfectly understandable. Here are some ways.

Don't enter. Possibly the simplest method. Just ignore it. Like the ice cream truck, it will be gone all too soon. Some, however, may want to work from within.

Cheat. You could start early. You could use your notes as novel. Heck, you could type "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" then copy and paste it five thousand, five hundred and fifty-six times. Winning NaNo that way couldn't be simpler. But you'll still have blown it. And you'll know it.

Spend too much time on the forums. Unless you're counting forum posts in your wordcount (see "Cheat" ), this one can sink you. Yes, they are mad fun. They are also a time-sink of epic proportions. Be careful.

Spend too little time on the forums. NaNo is in one specific month so we're all doing it together. The support of your fellow overcaffeinated writers is important. Avoid it, and your chances of winning go down markedly. It's true. Chris Baty had the wombats do a scientific thingy to prove it.

Plan too much. If all you have left to do is write (and that's not how you usually work) you will probably fall out of love mid-month if not sooner. It's hard to write what you're not in love with. Save some surprises for November.

Plan too little. It's supposed to be a novel, not 50K of notes. Leave it all to the last minute, and your story may meander all over the place--leading you to give up in disgust. Many writers are seat-of-the-pantsers. I'm one of them. But I think most of us at least start with a character, a setting, and a vague idea that the end is somewhere that-a-way.

Imagine publishing your NaNovel. That may be your ultimate goal, and that's fine. Some people have done it. Many more have dreamed of it. However. Maybe you're different, but a lot of writers, me included, cannot think about this in the first draft. There is no better way to bring my race-car of a story from 200mph to a wild, tumbling stop, pieces flying in every direction, than to ponder this madcap thing of 35,000 hastily-written words being read by someone. Especially a professional.

Don't back up your work! NaNo takes an incredible toll on computers, it seems. Not a year goes by that someone doesn't lose their entire manuscript because their hard drive gave up the ghost. (See: wild, tumbling stop, pieces flying in every direction) Want to blow it? Be one of those with no backups.

Take the Winchester approach. Not Dean, nor Sam. Charles Emerson Winchester, III. "I do one thing," he told Hawkeye, "I do it very well, and then I move on." This is an excellent method for some. This is not the method for NaNo.

Write too little. It seems a no-brainer. To win NaNo, you need fifty-thousand freshly-minted words by November 30th. Yet every year some people are caught up in other things and find themselves needing forty-thousand words in the next three days. Can it be done? Yes. Can you do it? Probably not. Many more writers fall in that final huge sprint than make it across the finish line.

Write too much. Okay, this isn't how to fail NaNo. I'm not sure it's even possible to write too much. (Unless your hands fall off. That might be a clue.) But I can guarantee, with 99.751% accuracy, that you will not have the highest wordcount. Some people write amazingly fast. Some go for monster wordcounts that you would never believe can be done.

They are doing it. Get over it. NaNo is about challenging yourself, not about sour grapes that someone has a bigger bar.

Of course, if you want to succeed at NaNo--well, you can probably see where to reverse the above advice. Except for the last one. Please don't gripe at the people typing their fingers off.

Now go stock up on caffeine, sugar, and wrist braces.