Dear O'Abby: Any NaNo Tips?

 Dear O'Abby,

I'm not sure if less people are doing NaNo this year or what, but I haven't seen much about it anywhere.  maybe it's just my own lack of attention on social media or something...  The death of Twitter seems to have made finding a community of writers online more difficult.

But I digress...

I am doing NaNo this year, and I'm feeling okay about what I'm writing, but I'm wondering if you have any tips to help me finish out the month?  It feels like I have a long way to go before I hit that 50K.

Best wishes,

NaNoing

Dear NaNoing,

Now that you mention it, you're right.  I haven't seen anything about NaNo anywhere either.  In fact, it wasn't until I saw this email that I realised it's well into November and I haven't offered a single NaNo tip here.  My bad!  I could blame it on the fact I'm not doing NaNo this year (too close to the end of a book to make it worthwhile), but I didn't do it last year either, and was way more aware.

In terms of tips, my best one is to just keep writing.  If you get stuck on a scene or a plot point, just write yourself a little note, skip that section and move on to a point where you know what needs to happen.  You can fill in the blanks later.  I use this approach all the time because often, after writing those later scenes, it's easier to know what needs to come before it.

Another tip I would give is not to stop to research anything.  It's far too easy to fall down an internet rabbit hole and lose hours of writing time.  If there's something you need to look up - a word in another language, the rules of beer pong, the title of a song you can't remember but know is perfect to be playing at the school dance - again, leave yourself a note and come back to it later.

Most of us have a limited amount of time to write and need to fit NaNo around other things like a day job, school, family.  If you can take a day off from any of this and just write, that's great.  Use that day to bulk up your wordcount so if you have a day later in the month where you can't write, it's not going to cause you undue stress or derail your progress.  

I also usually recommend people bank extra words early in the month while they're fresh and the book is new and exciting and you can't wait to get into it.  But it's kind of too late for that one...  I hope you did it anyway!

And those are my biggest tips.  I've had some very successful years doing NaNo, but also some very unsuccessful years.  If you don't make it to 50K, you're not a failure.  You've still started a book and some words are better than no words.  You're never going to finish a book during NaNo, so just take whatever you have written and keep going until you have.  Even if it takes you until the next NaNo to get there.

Good luck!

X O'Abby