Today is the last day of November 2016. It is day 30 of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). This year I decided to participate in NaNoWriMo with the intent of “winning” – writing 50,000 words within 30 days. SPOILER ALERT: I didn’t accomplish my writing goal. I was 8,905 words short of reaching that goal. But, I did manage to write 41,095 words in one month.

This wasn’t the first time I attempted to participate in the annual writing challenge, but this was the first time I nearly reached my goal. During the 30-day writing extravaganza, I learned a few things about myself, my writing process, and how I work under a strict deadline. I don’t know if what I learned will help you, but the lessons I gained this year will help me “win” NaNoWriMo 2017.

1. You Have to Write Every Day. It doesn’t matter how many words you write each day, but you need to put words on the page so that you can update your word count daily. Whether you write 50 words, 1,667 words (the recommended number of words prescribed by NaNoWriMo to achieve the 50,000-word goal), or 6,000 words, you need to update your word count EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. How do I know this? Because I didn’t write every day, and I believe that is one of the main reasons why I didn’t reach my 50,000-word goal.
2. Perfection Cannot Be Your Goal. The goal is to write 50,000 words in a month. In order to do so, you have to be willing to turn off your inner editor. Just get words on paper. It doesn’t matter how shitty those words are, because once you’re done writing them at the end of November, you’ll need to go back and edit those words. In the immortal words of Chuck Wendig, “Writing is when we make the words. Editing is when we make the words less shitty.” I’m not going to lie, I wrote my share of shitty words. In January I plan to edit and revise and write the missing pieces and edit some more.
3. Connect with a Writing Community. Belonging to a community of writers can not only provide the support and encouragement you need to keep writing, but it can also make you a better writer. If you belong to a writing community and are lucky enough to have other writer friends participating in NaNoWriMo, you can support each other and cheer each other’s successes each day of the process. And, if you want to get competitive, you can give each other writing challenges in order to reach your daily, weekly, and eventually monthly goal. Writing is typically a solitary pursuit, but that doesn’t mean you have quarantine yourself during the month of November in order to reach your goal. Join a NaNoWriMo writing group and get the support and encouragement you need to keep going.
4. Make Time to Write. If you don’t already have a time of day scheduled for writing, you should figure out when you are most productive and make an effort to write at the same time every day. Life can be busy. I’m a single mom who works full-time, and I also make an effort to have a satisfying social life. I’m no June Cleaver when it comes to housework, but I try to make my house clean enough to avoid a visit from Children and Youth Services. I often struggle to find time to write. My days start early and end late, and as you can imagine, there’s a lot that has to get done between 5:00 AM when my alarm goes off and 10:00 PM (if I’m lucky) when I turn off the lights and travel to Dream Land. If I am not selfish about making time for myself to write, guess what? I don’t write. And, unfortunately that happens a lot in my life. Take my advice. Be a dick if you have to, and make time for your writing.
5. Be Kind to Yourself. Sometimes when we set big goals for ourselves, we fail. Failing after trying to reach a goal is still better than never trying in the first place. Am I disappointed that I didn’t reach my 50,000-word goal? Well, sure. But I wrote 41,095 words in a month. That’s nothing to sneeze at, and now I know that I can write more than 40,000 words in a month. In fact, now that I know why I didn’t reach my goal, I’m pretty sure I can also reach 50,000 words in a month, which I plan to do next year when I participate in NaNoWriMo 2017.

Wait, can I add this blog post to my final word count?