Piper Nuelle

NaNoWriMo or otherwise known as National Novel Writing Month usually takes place every November and is a challenge to basically write a book or at least the first draft of a book in one month / 30 days.

Now I recently found out that NaNoWriMo is closing down after about 20 years being live and helping writers to write. Unfortunately it seems the organisation that was behind it got themselves into some scandals and financial problems and couldn’t recover from them. But more on that on another blog post.

For me last November or now otherwise known as the last and final year of NaNoWriMo to be precise, was actually a huge help in writing my book, and sadly I will miss it in some ways, but NaNoWriMo doesn’t define me as a writer. It has given some skills that I can take and use for many books and years to come but it had been a good starting point for me.

But forgetting the scandals and the closure, I did want to write about how I used NaNoWriMo last year to write my book, and maybe I can take these ideas and use them again but also they may help you if you are looking for ideas on how to write a novel in a month. So, how did I use NaNoWriMo to write my book, ‘Death’s Carousel’?…

So, obviously as the motto of NaNo expressed, it is to write a book, a story, a novel in a month and that is what I did. I already had the beginnings of an idea in my mind from something I thought of many moons ago, I just needed the push to write it all down. What I did was I purchased myself a new notebook and in the month of October, a whole month before NaNo, I hand wrote the first draft of my book, just a rough idea but still in a normal beginning, middle and end concept with potential chapters and chapter titles.

Once I had written the first draft I then took time to flesh out my characters. I scoured magazines and found pictures and images of people that I thought looked like my characters. Then I stuck them in my notebook along with some notes to remember about them, this way if I needed to flick back and remind myself of a certain person or character I could in a blink of an eye. It was actually so helpful to have.

Once the characters had been fleshed out and designed, I then took the chance to write, modify and edit the songs that would be appearing in my novel. Yes, you read that right, songs, or more importantly in my book, deathly lullabies. A deathly song sung to each character that warns them of their impending demise, unless they can figure why and or who is doing this to them. The song lyrics were important, they needed to show the reader what it was that the character had done to the main character, how they had bullied them and then also to set the scene because each song related to a part or ride at a funfair.

I wrote out each song individually and then paired it up with the corresponding character and potential death. It was a strange process but actually very satisfying.

Then came the month of NaNoWriMo, the month of actually writing that novel properly. I had my notebook at the ready with my first handwritten draft and then all I had to do was knuckle down and write every day to get that book onto the PC.

The actual process of writing daily is hard, it is by no means easy to do. But because I had a reason at the back of my mind and a deadline, it made me knuckle down and write. I would light candles to tell me how long I had to write, I couldn’t stop until the candle went out, they were usually tea lights or smaller candles but they would give me at least a couple of hours writing time at a time. Which was manageable and doable for me. I would also reward myself with cups of tea and or coffee when I hit certain targets or a point of the word count. The main target was 50,000 words, and I did smash that out the park during the month of November.

I would also listen to music. For me to write I need music and I usually dedicate an album or a certain playlist to a certain book or story. So not only did I have my candles, my rewards of caffeine, but I also had music to spur me on and inspire me.

With using NaNoWriMo the good thing was you could log your progress, and with that progress came badges that you could earn. It was great seeing a new badge pop up when I uploaded a word count target.

If you were to try and re-create something like NaNoWriMo at home, you totally could, just because it has had to shut down and close its doors doesn’t mean you can’t put some of the good things about it to good use. What I would recommend doing is;

• Have notebooks at the ready
• Have pens and stationary in easy reach, no one wants to go pen hunting midway through a brain dump when writing a novel because the ink ran dry
• Listen to music, plan a playlist if that helps you, if not make sure you are in a place where you can have silence and quiet and no disruptions
• Use a candle (But never leave the candle alone to burn, always keep an eye on it) but once it burns to a certain point if you have a large candle you can mark where you want to stop, or let it burn out if you have a smaller candle. Use that as your writing timer
• Reward yourself when you reach goals, e.g. cups of tea, a coffee break, a mindful walk down the park etc
• Keep reading other books. To be a good writer you need to read and sometimes reading around the same time a writing will keep your mind open to new forms of inspiration
• Do it with friends or a group, maybe you know a group of people that all want to write a novel in a month, maybe make it a group challenge, and then at the end of the month you can meet for drinks and discuss your stories and all what you have written so far and get feedback from one another
• Buy some stickers and make them your badges for reaching certain goals and or targets such as wordcount points

There you have it, this was how I used NaNoWriMo to help me write my book. I didn’t actually use all of it’s features on the website. I literally would log on daily, enter my word counts and collect badges. But I know a lot of other people used it socially with chats and forums, they logged everything on that website to do with their book, you could join writing groups in your area or around the world from the website. And although I didn’t use those aspects so much due to my social anxieties, I know those things may have helped others. And just because it is now gone doesn’t mean you can’t still do some of those things.

You can look for online writing groups to be a part of to help inspire yourself or others to write. And there will probably be something similar that may pop up eventually to take it’s place.

But just remember you don’t need it to write your book, you just need yourself, your imagination and at the very least pen and paper!!!

I hope you enjoyed my blog post. And remember my book is now live on Amazon to buy on either Kindle, Paperback and Hardcover!!!

xo Piper xo