National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a great way to start that writing project that has been taking hours of your sleeping time for the past year. In the end, it doesnā€™t really matter if you have successfully written a 50,000-word manuscript, or a couple of novellas, or half a dozen short stories. If you sit down and write words that might be the beginning of a great idea, you are already ahead of the game. Remember, you canā€™t fix what doesnā€™t exist, so you might as well start writing!

In this episode, we list the many things you can do to set yourself up for success when NaNoWriMo comes, what tips and tricks will help you power through your project and how to avoid distractions and burnouts that might stop your momentum. We also share our own experience writing stories on a deadline and how we dealt with difficulties and setbacks when they happened.

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Transcript for Strategic Authorpreneur Episode 063: Preparing to Rock NaNoWriMo

Crystal Hunt: Hey there, strategic authorpreneurs. Welcome to episode 63 of the Strategic Authorpreneur Podcast. I’m Crystal Hunt.

Michele Amitrani: And I’m Michele Amitrani and we are here to help you save time, money, and energy as you level up your writing career.

If you find this show helpful, you can help us keep the episodes coming by clicking to the buy us a coffee button on the website and the show notes.

Crystal Hunt: Today we are focusing on prepping for NaNoWriMo, which is national novel writing month. And we’re going to talk about what you can do to set yourself up for success. But first, we’re going to tell you a little bit about what we’ve been up to. Michele, what have you been doing off there in Italy?

What has happened since the last episode?

Michele Amitrani: Crystal it has been an interesting couple of weeks. I have continued brainstorming a series of science fiction novels. That is proceeding steadily. I’ve been putting around letā€™s say one hour per day, sometimes one hour and a half when I felt particularly lucky, on this task of brainstorming ever since September 13th.

By the time we’re recording, this has been one month or a bit more. So I’m excited. But you know, it’s that part of the project in which you are very excited. And then when you pick at the scale and the magnitude of it, you might get scared. And this is one of the project that eventually might get me scared, but now I’m just enjoying the ride.

And I’ve got something I have to say, figure it out after this 30 days of constantly brainstorming for at least one hour per day, some fragments of plots a few scenes, half a dozen main characters are already pinned down, but the structure is still faltering, itā€™s still not there yet. Iā€™m now dedicating a few session per days, maybe 30 minutes, one hour session per day, to just writing scenes, fragments of stories, you know, that kind of stuff.

It might be even parts of chapters. It doesn’t have to be anything written on stones. But hopefully these things, these writing bursts are going to help me keep momentum going, which is one of the most important things at the beginning of every project, and later on, hopefully I will be able to fill the gaps and as I move forward and hopefully figuring out little by little this new writer project that, if everything goes well, will keep me busy for all 2022. Mythological fantasy wise the mythological fantasy number five in is that the last round of beta readings. So at this moment, the last beta is reading it. I will put it on pre-order as I did with the last three or four mythological fantasy, if for nothing else, just because, as you know Crystal, I love pre orders. They save me a lot of time and a lot of admin job that I can do weeks before the release date.

So I don’t have to think about that anymore. I’m thinking of releasing this fourth by the middle of December it should be out. And again, this will free my hands on the mythological side for the rest of 2021. So that I can finally focus on translating the very last of my projects, which is translating mythological fantasy number six.

And Iā€™m using numbers, just because I know that probably listeners are not going to be very happy to hear Italian names. I think it’s, it’s easier for them if I just use the numbers, but these books, they do have names it’s just they are in Italian. And once these projects the mythological fantasy number six, is translated in Italian, this is a big breadth because I will finally be done with the middle logical fantasy until April, 2022. So I’ve lined up products and until that time, and I can use this time to figure out what to do with my 2022 on the English side. And I can dedicate more time on my Italian science fiction project.

Also by the time this recording goes live mythological fantasy number four in Italian will be released as an exclusive new release for four days, only on the Kobo store. And this is a new thing for me. I am the reached out on one of the couple representative and she showed interest in this project is the first of a trilogy of novellas.

And so we’re going to do this. We’re going to release the Italian version of Scion of Gaia on Kobo exclusive for four days. And see what happens basically. I’ve never done something like this, so I will be back with more information once I will have. I’m excited, of course, and Kobo, I already mentioned this a few episodes ago, but the platform and the people there have been extremely gentle and great and amazing thing with me.

So I’m looking forward to this collaboration and finally I’ve been reading a lot of science fiction stuff in the last couple of a couple of weeks, three weeks or so. Just to get into the scifi mode, you know, just because I will have to write with passion a lot of science fiction stuff in the next few months.

So I need to get in the zone. And I just finished Leviatanā€™s Wake which is the first book of The Expanse, a universal. I loved it, I really highly recommend it if you like space opera or kind of detective thriller kind of stuff. I really liked it. And next on the horizon for me I’m going to be reading Legionnaire.

I don’t know if I’m pronouncing this correctly. It’s the first book of from the Galaxy’s Edge series and then Bypass Gemini, which is another, I believe kind of a space opera-sih kind of things, but more on the funny side. So again, I’m trying to get the feeling of the science fiction in the hope that you know, some tropes, some things are going to give me ideas for my own, for my own series.

And what about you and the lovely, I believe cold time there in Vancouver is kind of Christmasy kind of feeling is giving you some ideas for your stories?

Crystal Hunt: We’re getting there. Yeah. It’s definitely very, very wet and it’s getting quite chilly. So I, I did have the fireplace on and I was all cozied up over the weekend.

We had our Canadian Thanksgiving happened, so we were eating Turkey and all of the things that often we have the same kind of meal at Christmas. So yeah, we definitely enjoyed the cooler temperatures and it seems that the cooler temperatures kick everyone into high gear and fall gets very busy and happens at a very rapid pace.

So there’s been all kinds of exciting things going on. One of them is that Publish Drive had a lifetime license on sale through AppSumo, which is not something I’ve ever seen them do before. If you were on our Strategic Entrepreneur mailing list, you got a very excited email telling you that if you were interested in using Publish Drive as your aggregator, that you should get the rapidly to AppSumo and purchase a lifetime license, because that is a very cool opportunity.

So for me, it was interesting timing because literally that day, my task was set to upload all of my books to Publish Drive. And so I quickly went in and grabbed the AppSumo deal. And it meant a little shuffling. And I have like reset up everything on the back end, but it did mean it’s going to save me probably tens of thousands of dollars over the life of my publishing career.

So that was very exciting. And I was just over the moon and of course I had to share it in all of the other writers groups and everywhere else that I thought people might be interested because it’s unlikely that we’ll see this deal again. It’s something that usually only pops up kind of once in the lifetime of any given software.

So definitely exciting. So I will be good to go very soon, but if you’re following along, you will have noticed that the books are not available yet and that is why I’m hoping they will be by the time you hear this. But as of this moment of recording, they are not quite yet. Another exciting thing that’s happening is I had taken most of this year off of everything except writing, the only teaching exception I made was for the Creative Academy where I teach one class a week and then. The other exception was the Surrey International Writers’ Conference, which is coming up. I’m able to actually, I think have happened by the time you hear this episode.

It is going on next week. And I am teaching a whole bunch of new workshops there. So there’s a master class on setting with Eileen Cook. And I’m teaching also a workshop on writing shorter romance and another one on strategic indie publishing, and then on a couple of different topics on romance and one with the whiskey chicks, which is a lovely group of fellow writers, where we’re going to talk about basically rebooting your career and picking yourself up after a big shift.

So really looking forward to that, and if you missed the conference for this year, we can mark your county for next year. So the Surrey International Writers’ Conference is definitely something to check out on the publishing side of things. Our Create with Coauthors book should be live for presale by the time you are listening to this, it is going in preorder tomorrow I believe.

And December 1st is our launch date for that. So if you are looking to do any kind of collaborative creation, whether it’s, you know, box sets or being part of a shared world or writing a world or book collaboratively, it’s filled with. questions and suggestions and different ways of working together and tools you can use to make all of that easier.

All kinds of questions you need to be able to answer with your writing partners in order to keep things running smoothly. So I’m super excited about that. It is we’ve been working on it for the past year with Donna Barker and Eileen Cook. So that is just about to be a real book in the world.

And finally, on the writing side of things, I am still working on Elfed. Which has been good, that we’ve been eating Turkey and sitting by the fire and getting in the Christmas mood. I always find it challenging to write a holiday stories, not at the holidays and now that we are close enough to start feeling a little bit festive than it is going well.

So I’m excited about that and developing characters and plot lines for the cozy mysteries as well. So I’ve been using the plot embryo method for doing very high level outline for each of those stories, which has been really interesting. So you can check out is Dan Harmon’s concept originally, but Rachel Stephen has a very good Sort of YouTube video series about how to outline using the plot embryo system, and she has some printable and things like that as well that you can get that really help you put it together without having to make the templates yourself, which is super handy. So the last piece of all of that is that I always do a bit of an overhaul or an externalizing of my writing process at this time of year, I do as SiWC, I have a lot of stuff I had to take out of my head and put onto the page so I can teach workshops about it, which really makes me clarify my own process and how I’m developing story and how I’m doing all those pieces. And I often am also reading new books and making sure I’ve integrated some new stuff before the winter season of writing. So I have been creating a template for the cozy mysteries and a template for the romances, which is basically just the shape of the story and the pacing, it’s the bones of the thing. And so I have put together a template for each of those genres, so that when I sit down to write the next story, I can just open up that template and I have a process to follow very specifically from beginning to end, and that really speeds things up and makes it much more efficient. And then I can focus on the fun stuff, which is like how am I going to emotionally wound to my characters? I was all of that point happen. So who’s going to get murdered stuff like that.

Very important. So that is all kinds of fun and brings us to our topic for today, which is NaNoWriMo. So Michele, I’m curious. Okay. First, like maybe give the audience a little bit of a description of what nano is and also have you ever done NaNoWriMo and how did that go if you did?

What is NaNoWriMo and what does it mean for writers all over the world?

Michele Amitrani: So for our listeners NaNoWriMo is national novel writing month, and it’s basically trying to write a 50,000 words, manuscript in a month, 50,010 should be, if you have an average of a 1,667 words per day which is a massive effort for me, but also for a lot of writers that I spoke with. I know a lot of people that attempted this and there are actually hundreds of thousands of people that do this as an event, as something that the writer community comes together.

And there are groups all over the world of people that are writing together, even on, you know, zoom rooms. We ourselves in the Creative Academy there are going to be groups dedicated to this, but it’s basically an occasion to write but knowing that there are so many other people that are doing the same things and trying to achieve the objective of writing a novel in a month. So this is basically what’s NaNoWriMo. Regarding the second part of your question? I have never attempted one, but I am thinking of seeing if I can try and doing something this November 2021. The reason why I never attempted it it’s because I don’t think I’m good enough to be honest with you to even attempt writing 50,000 words in a month, I considered myself at this point to be mainly a pantser and I was never able, that I recall, to plot and then write a novel in one single month.

Novellas? Sure. Short story? Sure. But when we’re talking about the novel, itā€™s a whole different kind of beast. Those 20, 30,000 words more compared to a novella, for example, makes all the difference and Iā€™m sure Crystal youā€™re going to get to add something more about that because you have even more experience of me about writing short or shorte-ish, let’s say short-is because 20,000, 30,000 words, it’s not really that short, right? But really it’s a completely different kind of endeavor. Hence why today we are going to speak also about some things that you can do to help yourself set up a system that works for you.

But always keeping in mind, something that I think it’s important to remember wherever you achieve this number 50,000 words, or you don’t like if you write 39,000 words it shouldn’t feel like a failure. Because you are trying something that I personally consider to be very difficult, a very time consuming, complex, ut you also have to keep the fun in it. Which I think is one of the components of why this event exists, because it tells us writers that it is fun to write and it is important that we keep this fun component into the equation. If not, and I might be mistaken Crystal, but if we don’t keep this component into the mix and you you’re forcing yourself to write those, you know, 50,000 words, the readers might feel it. They might detect that thing.

So it’s justā€¦ you want to be as much giving yourself a break and having fun with the whole process. If you are planning it, writing it, and then deciding if you have you if you can use a system to help you in the process of writingā€“what do you think about this first part, the planning part, of the NaNoWriMo?

Crystal Hunt: Well, I have doneā€¦ NaNoWriMo started in 1999 and I don’t actually remember how many years I’ve done it, but I know it’s more than 10 for sure. Sometimes I do the official where you log your words in the actual nano site and, you know, communicate with people and everything. But sometimes I just thereā€™s too much going on, if I fully engage with everything and I actually find it very distracting. So some years I just kind of play along at home on my own. And there are some really great sort of prizes in quotes for winning nano, which is getting to those words, getting everything logged inside the official nano site, there’s really good breaks on software and services and all that kind of stuff that you can get if you finish. I have over the past 15 years, I bought literally everything I could ever need for hope to want to do with writing. And so I haven’t really prioritized that part in the last few years, but if you’re still kind of earlier on in your journey and there are things, if you don’t own Scrivener, you know, don’t have I’m not sure what all else is going to be in the prizes, so I don’t want to commit anybody other than Scrivener seems like always is. So we can talk about that one. But if you’re still in that earlier phase and you haven’t yet purchased all the things for writing, then it’s worth doing it officially so that you get those coupon codes at the end of the event, because it isā€¦ there’s some really cool stuff in there. And again, lots of special partnerships that don’t come up in a lot of other contexts. So definitely we’re checking out. I am what we call a nano rebel because I don’t write longer stuff as a rule, which means that what I’m doing it’s usually stringing together two different novellas or I’m writing a novella and a short story, or one year I wrote three early reader chapter books in that month, which added up to enough words to qualify. There is an official title: ā€˜nano rebelsā€™. It’s a thing. And so you can define your own parameters. You don’t have to write a novel. What I think, no matter which way you’re doing it, it is useful to kind of decide how you’re going to approach your story and do a bit of story development in advance. If you can. Even if you are a discovery writer prepping your characters or, you know, whatever process you use to work your way into the story is useful to do that in advance. And October is actually known as Preptober in a lot of circles because people will develop the story they’re going to write during nano and they’ll figure out, you know, what plot points they’re going to have and where’s the turning points and all of that.

So. Being ready when that, you know, November 1st bell strikes is a good way to assist yourself in setting up for success. So. Let’s talk a little bit about scheduling. So Michele, let’s say that you do decide to do nano this year. You are going to need to targets 1,667 words per day, every single day in November to reach that goal.

Now, how are you going to do that? Let’s brainstorm some ideas. What would you have to do to pull that off?

How to make the most out of your NaNoWriMo by preparing everything you need before starting typing the first word

Michele Amitrani: I am lucky enough that I can use Scrivener. I’ve been finding it a tool that it’s very useful for at least the way I write and with Scrivener there, there are some tools that allows you to actually keep count and keep tracks on the words that you’re writing. I’m an old school kind of guy. So, basically what I do when I have to track words, which is not my strong suit. I track minutes and hours more. But when I do have to do that, I start with a new file and this is completely blank. And then by the end of the writing day, I know how much I written that day.

And then I can add it to the novel that I’ve been writing until that moment. So this is just a one of the way that I do it is a very not fashionable way. But it just keeps me, helps me writing. And keeps keeping count of the words that I’ve written on a particular day.

I also am a kind of analog guy. So I use a lot pen and paper. So at the end of each day, I will write the number of words with my pen on a sheet so that I will know at the end of the week or the month, how much I have in total and that helps me knowing, okay if I have 15 days left, how much do I have to write to make it happen? So this is just the way I work. I know of people that use spreadsheets, for example there are other softwares that can help you do this in a more timely and fashionable way than just writing it down on a paper. You can just I guess Google it and probably Crystal has a more definitive answer to that.

But as long as you know, by the end of that day, how many words youā€™ve written then you are good to go. But something that is important to remember, and we mentioned this a few times in the podcast, is that sometimes you really can’t predict the future. So maybe you have planned everything accordingly every single day in November, you know what you’re going to do, and then something happens.

And then there is the pause and the tension. In this case, you have to be able to course-correct. You have to been able toā€¦ if you need to take a couple of days off or three days off, you have to know, okay from this point on, how do I start over? And this is something you, you can plan in advance for planning for a disaster, some would call it, or just course correct as you go.

But I think it’s important to remember that. Number 1667 words per day is just a number can be 2000 or 3000 in the day and maybe zero or just 100. As long as you have the bigger picture and you know that by the end of that month, you have enough things that you put in place to set yourself up for success and then that’s an additional thing that is going to help you go through the month, even though something happens in November. So solution and brainstorming and things that might compete with your attention like family. If you have some commitments planning for this, as much as you can it’s important because this month in order to be a successā€¦ in order to be writing those 50,000 words per month, you need to be able to plan in advance.

And Crystal was mentioning before October is dedicated most of the time for the planning so that you don’t have to do that. If you are not a pantser and you are able to plot an outline then definitely if you use the October for that, you don’t have to waste time in November and you just dive straight into the writing phase.

So I think this is important to remember course corrector, plan for the worst that it might happen and also being able to brainstorm if there is something that is not working have a plan B or plan C in place. And also if you have like a a buddy and writing buddy, that can be helpful. I know a lot of people that are going to write with other people at the same time, like in a zoom room, for example or they can go and write together in a coffee shop.

That is something that makes them accountable and it’s something that definitely, depending on, of course your personality, can really help achieving these goals. It’s one day at a time and you don’t have to think of it as a huge endeavor, but just something that you have to do consistently day after, day after day, and Iā€™m curious to know Crystal, if you think it’s still even possible to predict or to be ready for things that, you know, might happen or not. And in case if you have a bit more of a suggestion on how to do that, how to predict and how to make sure that you really put those words in that month.

Crystal Hunt: Okay. Yes! Thereā€™s definitely things that I always do before taking that on.

And this is actually something that I do every month when I’m trying to figure out what my goals for that month are and how it’s going to work. And the first one is to do a little bit of forecasting. So you’re basically going to sit down with your calendar and take a look at, okay, what are the days when it doesn’t seem like writing is going to be possible.Ā 

So we just had Thanksgiving for example, and it was at my house. So I was cooking Turkey pies, stuffing, gravy, potatoes, all the things, and also cleaning the house and doing all that stuff. So there were roughly three days where I was not functional as a writer, I was prepping, cooking, cleaning it up after doing, spending time with my family, which is a priority.

So I needed to block off those three days from my writing schedule. So you need to do something similar with your own schedule in that if you look at the month of November and you know, maybe you have a kid who’s got a soccer tournament that you’re going to be driving to and from, and you canā€™t really safely, write while you’re driving. Some people dictate but I think that’s a challenge if there’s a car full of kids and also you’re a bit distracted, so not what I would recommend. So you need to figure out, okay, how many days off do you need? There’s also the question of maintaining mental and emotional and physical health as you do this.

So, you know, everybody has different capacity and it’s important to plan something that is going to work for your capacity and not try to bend yourself around some external expectation. So how much can you really write per day? What makes sense for your body? What makes sense in terms of avoiding burnout? For me, I like to schedule days off in each week and not actually have to write every single day because I find my chances of doing, you know, successfully getting to the end of 30 days are better if it’s not every single day, even if itā€™s just Sunday’s off, but what one day to kind of recoup and then let your brain figure out the next parts of the story. Especially if your discovery writing can often be really helpful. So I usually target 2000 words a day, but I give myself a few days off in the month. And you don’t have to schedule which days those are going to be.

You can give yourself some kits that you can cash in. If you have little tokens, maybe there, you know, you’ve got some poker chips or some fancy rocks or some pennies or something at home, you can use those as chips, even if they’re sticky notes that say free day, and they’re attached to your computer often having the choice of caching one in you’ll often choose to save them just in case, you know, and kind of keep going. But knowing you have the option just takes some of the stress out of it. And there’s also a psychological phenomenon called theā€¦ it’s actually called the, ā€˜what the hell effectā€™, which is when you were trying to stick to some kind of habit forming plan and you miss a day and you’re like, oh, well, I’ve wrecked it now. Like I can’t, I can’t catch up what the hell it’s over. And that’s basically what it, that if you disrupt your habit for your pattern and you have this sense of, oh, well now I can’t get back on track. I had to do, you know, every single day to make this work. So instead of sort of setting yourself up for that, what the hell effect, if you have given yourself a few permissible days off and the freedom to cash them in, when you most need them, then you’re not going to have that like, I’ve completely failed.

It’s like, oh no, I had a plan. I do this and then tomorrow I’m back at it. So that is a very valuable thing to have ready. And I would say on the side of like, keeping your mental, emotional, physical health, all that stuff, to make sure that you’ve done a little bit of brainstorming in advance when you look at your calendar for the month, is there stuff that you can front-load and do before the month starts.Ā 

So when are you going to get groceries? For example, maybe you decide you’re going to have groceries delivered for that month and you choose which you know, okay, well, I’m going to do that once a week or every two weeks or whatever it is.

Maybe you decide to prep in advance some healthy meal options or to order slightly different groceries than you normally would so that you have things that are quick and easy to prepare so you’re not going to use that potential writing time by doing lots of dishes and, you know, worrying about that.

But you do need to not just eat Doritos the whole months, because that’s easy. You still want to make sure you’re getting some nutrition. Your brain will give up on you if you are not getting enough sleep and you’re not eating properly, and you’re not getting at least a whiff of fresh air and you know, a little bit of movement in your day, then you are going to start to feel that, and it is going to negatively impact your performance, not just during, but after nano. We have to remember December it comes right after November and December is generally a pretty big month for family commitments and parties and holiday stuff. And even if that is adjusted scope-wise for whatever is going on in the world you’re not probably going to skip it entirely. So just keeping in mind, this is a marathon. And while we might be doing a little bit of a quick pace through this next leg of it, it does not mean it’s over at the end of that month. So how can you get some support at home as well, because this is a really important piece.

It isn’t just the practical stuff of like making sure that your house is clean or that year, you know, you have meal options, you’ve got family, you’ve got friends, you’ve got commitments. You need to make sure that you are still able to connect with your family and friends and that they understand what’s happening.

And also that they know you’re not abandoning them forever. You may just temporarily be hitting pause on the amount of time and energy you are putting into those relationships. So actively talking to people in advance and explaining to your friends and family: Okay, I’m going to try and do this thing.

It’s going to be sort of a different month and I want to make sure that you know that, you know, I, I’m not deserting you. I like to prebook some social stuff for early December, just so that the key people in my life know we’re going to get some quality time together and there’s something to look forward to and that we we’ve got that in the plan.

And that also helps because you know, we talked about it often, December is a very busy kind of season and there’s lots of things going on and people want to connect and all of that. If you’ve already got some of that in the calendar, you don’t have to worry about planning it in the middle of nano as well, because if you are way down deep into your story the last thing you want is to be yanked out, to try to make holiday plans or figure out when you’re going to get together with your friends for dinner or whatever. So if you’ve preloaded, some of that planning, you can tell people like, hey, look, I’m going to do this thing in November and it’s going to mean I’m basically a hermit, but I want to surface in December and I want to see you, so let’s get that on the calendar so we know it’s going to have. And people generally appreciate that, that you’re making the effort and then everybody can just do their thing and that’s fine. And if you have a family at home who, you know, your usual patterns may change a bit.

If you are not a full-time writer, you’re going to be prioritizing different things than you would normally. And so you may need to recruit your kids or your spouse or your roommates or whoever, and see if you can swing a deal like, hey, you know, if your roommate’s willing to do dishes for the month of November, you’ll take December.

So you might need to just negotiate on a few of those fronts and see what you can arrange to free up some energy. Now, Michele, you mentioned sort of having an accountability buddy or another writer who you can connect with. What are some other options for connecting with other writers?

How writer groups and accountability buddies might be the best thing ever happened to writers

Michele Amitrani: So Crystal, we spoke about communities and I do believe that making this like a game, this 50,000 words per month something like a game, something that you have to achieve and you can do with other people with other writers is going to make the whole process way more fun. We spoke about communities. We are part of an amazing community called the Creative Academy, this is one of the reasons I think why also something like NaNoWriMo exists because all the writers get together to do something that they’re passionate about, which is writing stories.Ā 

So if you can make this happen, if you can put into the equation of NaNoWriMo, other writers it can help her a lot on the craft side, I think.

And also on the accountability I spoke with other writers that tried NaNoWriMo, most of them were made accountable by other writers and a lot of them were able to write more than 50,000 words. I know of one writer that was able to write an epic fantasy of over 100,000 words on November.

And I know that one of the of the reason why he was successful in that is because he was made accountable by other people. Again, it doesn’t have to be a match or it doesn’t have to be around or a marathon, it just need to be something that can help something that, that you can use in your arsenal being accountable with other writers, being part of community also helps a lot. I mentioned before the Creative Academy, but it can be anything. It can be a group of writers in a coffee shop. It can be a group of writers that are meeting in a Zoom room. Anything that you can possibly think about, just trying, if you can, to instill the game component and the challenge in it.

I think it’s going to be very helpful in letting you writing the words down. And when I see myself trying this in November, as some of the things that I’d done in the past, when there was the deadline, when there was another person that made me accountable, I know that I’m 90 to 95 percent more likely to achieve that particular objective.

And this is just a way I personally work. It might not be the case for you, but I do believe that if you are these components of the community, the accountability, they might help you writing 50,000 words or more. And the most important thing, having fun in the process, because if you can share this, if you cab say to a friend, look today, I wrote 3000-4000 words, itā€™s not just you in a vacuum. It’s just more like feeling part of something bigger than you. And I think this is something that needs to be stressed and itā€™s something that can definitely be done by yourself. But if you can try and if you don’t have a community you know, that there is the Creative Academy, so you can sign up for that, then we will holler you.

This is important though and I also know that Crystal for you, this is important, not only because you created one of these community but also, because it’s something that makes us more like a group of people together. And this is what I think of the community effect for NaNoWriMo

Crystal Hunt: And I definitely want to stress to like the NaNoWriMo community itself has a really fantastic infrastructure on their website to help you connect with people. So even if you don’t know any other writers and you are brand new and you’ve just decided this would be a fun thing to do, but you have no connections, if you are officially doing nano, when you sign up through their website, then there are on the gamification side, there are badges you can earn like you paste in your words each day and it counts them for you and it shows you where you’re at. If you’re on target on track, it does give you badges for your profile, you can make friends with people, you can connect with other writers who you do know and so then you can follow along with the smaller group. And that is a really fun way if you’re doing it to connect. So what a lot of groups do, and lots of individuals do is use their existing writing groups to find out who’s doing nano.

And then they connect inside the nano platform with the people that they already know. And there are tons of what they call them, write-ins. And so in your local area, there are chapters of the nano organization in all different areas. So let’s say you’re living in, you know, on Vancouver island, you can go and see where are those centers and people will meet up in coffee shops to just write together.

There’s a lot of Zoom ones this year, so that people can meet up virtually. And we do have our writing sprint room open 24/7 in the Creative Academy. So you can always jump in there and kind of write with friends. And that is, that is a really fun piece of how to do it. Now, in addition to connecting with other writers, you also need to make sure that your space is ready for this.

So I think there’s a lot of people who do a bit of an end of October clean up in their office space or their writing space or whatever you’re going to be. It is important to make sure that you minimize the reasons slash excuses for getting up from your desk and wandering around the house of, oh, well, I can’t find my favorite pen or I need this notebook that I put all my notes in or whatever excuse your procrastinating brain is going to come up with.Ā 

You want to make sure that you have all of the things you’re going to need within arm’s reach if possible. And you’re also going to make sure that you have your desk and your situation set up in a way that’s going to keep your body working because if you’re not at a place in your career where you’re already spending a couple hours a day writing, or however long, it takes you to get to those 1667 words, you need to make sure that you are setting up a space that’s going to support you physically and not end up with wrist problems, back problems, neck problems, all of these things.

So make sure that you’ve got your desk space, all set up in a way that’s going to support you. And once you’ve got all that ready, there’s one really important final step, which is basically tell your internal editor to take a hike. You need to write them a note that says they’re on vacation or whatever it is you need to do to say, okay, we are drafting here. We’re not writing a perfectly polished finished book. Speed and flow are the key words here and yes, you do want it to be good writing, but this is not the time to agonize over the placement of your punctuation or, you know, a little details or even a character’s name. If you haven’t decided in advance, do the thing with the brackets or highlight it, put in something temporary, say character X or character Y and just keep going. And then once you’ve completed your words for the day, you can cycle back and fill in those blanks and while you’re catching up on those dishes, you can ponder a little better what you want to fill in those blanks with maybe you’re out for a walk and that’s your time to do your thinking, whatever it is, make sure that you are just keeping yourself moving forward.Ā 

Michele, any other sort of words of wisdom to offer out? I know you may not have done nano a bunch of times, but you wrote like 12 novellas last year so you’ve definitely been working on power drafting as a general approach to things. So what else do you have to offer us here?

Michele Amitrani: Yeah. I think the suggestions that you gave about suggesting your internal editors to take a break was very good and very useful. This is not the book by itself by definition. It’s what I wouldā€¦ and not only Iā€¦many people would call it a vomit draft. Don’t give this high expectation.

It might be not finished in my have gaps, it needs to be re-written probably. This is not the polished books as Crystal was saying, be kind with yourself. I think this psychological component is important to rememberā€”with yourself and your storyā€”threat it like your new best friend. And the other thing that I think it’s very important to remember is that you shouldn’t compare yourself with others. And this is something that I do most of the times, which is a mistake. Don’t do this. Itā€™s not helpful for your self-esteem. But don’t compare your start with someone else middle. If you don’t ride a 50010 words but only 39,000, itā€™s still a win. It’s still good. You go celebrate, do something good for yourself. And again, treat yourself nicely. Donā€™tā€¦ this is, again, doesn’t have to be a complete book. It’s not going to be a complete book, but it can be the beginning of something. It might be just ten thousands of words, it might be the beginning of a novel. It might be a couple of novellas. As long as you’re writing you’re good to go. This is the important thing. Crystal before underline that. She’s a rebel, but if she writes two novellas or like three or four short stories, instead of a novel, it’s still a win.

It’s something that you can use in the future. So please do remember that. And also I will say, just remember why you’re doing it. It’s not the chase. It’s not something that is going to make you or break you. And if you’re not enjoying the moment, the writing part, why are you doing it? This is something that I have learned when Crystal was mentioning, I was writing a lot of things fast.

You have to consider why you are doing this. What is your objective? Why did you start off? The pleasure of writing I think it’s something important because readers are going to feel that when they read your story. So if you are having an amazing time writing what you’re writing the readers, I guarantee it, that are going to feel that so make this experience awesome for you, and then you’re going to Polish that in the future, but now you’re just writing for the fun of it.Ā 

Remember this every single time you are sitting, it’s not a job, itā€™s that moment of the year in which you give yourself the freedom to work on many kinds of projects regardless of: am I using this for marketing or this series? Is this going to be at the beginning of a new series that I can monetize? None of that. I don’t suggest you to do that. Just suggest to enjoy the moment. That’s the only thing.Ā 

How to turn a bad writing day into an awesome opportunity to level up your writing game

Crystal Hunt: And I’m going to tell you a fun, little story about nano, which is that in 2014, I decided. Okay, I’m going to do this, like officially this time, I’m going to sit down and register on the site, blah, blah, blah.

I planned out the story I was going to write, I preptobered the heck out of everything. I was so ready and I sat down on my laptop on November 1st and I typed in a completely different name that had nothing to do with my other story. And then I just wrote.

Michele Amitrani: Was it Whistle While you Work?

Crystal Hunt: The original one, I was going to write it was called Whistle While you Work. It’s changed names multiple times and I still actually haven’t finished that one, but but I will, soon it is coming up in the agenda. But yes, the original one I planned was called Whistle While you Work. And what happened was I sat down and I wrote Silver Bells instead, and I didn’t know where it came from, I just kind of poured it all out, completely pantsed it. I had no idea what was happening. But it was super fun and it’s what felt right to do when I sat down and I spent most of December polishing that I had it edited, did all the things. And then I released it as a present on Christmas Eve actually just as a free download for people.

And it has been, I guess, seven years since then, and like half a million people have now read that book and it turned out to be the start of all of Rivers End stuff. That that’s not what I planned. It wasn’t intended to be an entry into that. It’s just what it developed into. So, like Michele said, trust your instincts, trust your gut, and just roll with whatever energy is jumping on you.

If it, you know, don’t worry about the logic as much as the fun, it is a great, great way to kind of rediscover your love of writing and to just let that muse drive for a little while and see what happens. So on that note, we’re going to let you get back to your writing and your prepping and at this point, when this episode goes live, you’ll be just about ready to dive right in, but you’ll have a couple more days still to scramble around and make sure you’ve done all those prepping bits and pieces that we talked about in this episode.Ā 

We hope you enjoyed today’s show and remember to hit that subscribe button, wherever you’re listening to the podcast, you can visit us at strategicauthorpreneur.com for show notes and links to the books, resources, and tools we spoke about in today’s episode. As always feel free to hit that buy a coffee button, if you find the show helpful, every contribution helps keep the shows coming and keep our productions ads free.Ā 

It’ll also help keep us caffeinated so we can survive nano month, right alongside you. So until next time, happy writing everybodyĀ 

Michele Amitrani: Happy writing everyone.Ā