How to Survive NaNoWriMo, 2017 Edition

NaNoWriMo is going on for some people.  I’m not doing it this year.  I’m not feeling it, I have too much other stuff going on, and I just did the writing-thing-per-day challenge thing last month, with the October flash fiction.*

But here is my 2017 advice for surviving writing 50K in a month:

  • You do you.  No writing advice is absolutely 100% always true.  NONE OF IT.  Head-hop if you wanna, edit if you wanna, research if you wanna, quit if you wanna.
  • It takes a long time to become a good writer.  Hoftstadter’s Law applies.  It’s not a waste of time.  Learning how to write is learning how to think.
  • If your life is such that you can’t cope with taking time to do something nice for yourself for a month, maybe it’s time to rethink that.
  • There are a bunch of naysayers out there who think they’re just exposing you to the realities of the world by telling you that NaNo is a waste of time or that they’re “beyond all that.”  You’re a fiction writer. WHAT NEED DO YOU HAVE OF REALITY ANYWAY?
  • You have my permission to use whatever tricks or lies you need to use in order to do the writing.
  • It’s tempting to think that an experiment only has validity if everything works according to the hypothesis–but that’s bad science.  An experiment is only a failure if you put a thumb on the scales.
  • You don’t have to be having fun in order to be writing well or making progress.
  • Even monkeys at the zoo get to have enrichment activities.  So do we.
  • Oh, man.  If your rings are loose, just take them off and put them somewhere safe right now, or else you’re gonna leave them at some coffee shop because they’re going to spin around as you type.
  • Drink more water, get some exercise in every day, buy freezer meals with fiber.  Otherwise pooping is going to become a serious problem, haha, not joking.
  • Every day is a new day.  Every failure is one failure, and that’s in the past.  Every success is one success, and that’s in the past, too.  The important part is to go inside what makes you, you.  And to bring something back.  That’s all.  The rest is up for grabs.
  • Moar words is moar words.

Good luck.

*Which I loved and am planning to do again next year, with phobias.

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