How I Won NaNoWriMo

How I won NaNoWriMo

Nano What's it?

NaNoWriMo also known as National Novel Writing Month, is a world-wide movement intended to move aspiring writers from only aspiring to actual writing.  It sets the audacious goal of writing 50,000 words of a novel in the month of November.
To accomplish this goal, a writer must, for each of November's 30 days, write 1,667 words.

Many Start But Few Succeed

In 2013, of the over 300,000 people who signed up to do Nano, only 41,940 'won' by completing their goals, which is less than 14%.  This number is consistent with previous years expectations.  Less than two of every ten participants actually accomplish what they set out to do.
I wanted to win, I truly did, but I fully expected to lose.  After all, 86% of the people who attempt Nano don't succeed in writing 50,000 words.

How I Won

The Plan
The first step to winning is planning.  Before November started, I set up my infrastructure.  I decided what I was going to write, how much I was going to write every day, what times of day I would devote to writing, how I would keep track of my writing, and how to back up my writing.

It wasn't weeks of planning, but I gave it a bit of thought before the month began, so I would be in the best position to win.

The story had been on my mind for about a year, so I had a lot of it already mapped in my head.  Next year, I plan to do a full outline and see if that helps speed things.

Set Time
I wrote at the same time everyday. In order to minimize Nano's disruption of my family, I decided to get up earlier than normal to write.  For me, that meant that most days I was up between 3:30 AM and 4:30 AM.  On weekends, I slept in to 5:30 AM. 

As a consequence of this, I got into a writing routine and my cat got used to being fed at 3:30AM.  Now she jumps on the wife and I every morning if I'm not up at 3:30,  as if to say, "Come on, it's time for breakfast."

I can't stress how important it is to set aside a fixed time each day to write.  If I hadn't done this, I would have failed.

Goals
I also set a personal writing goal.  Yea, I know, the goal is 1,667 every day, but every day wasn't the same.  I wasn't terribly sophisticated about it.  I knew  that writing the minimum of 1,667 words would translate to failure when life got in the way of writing, so I decided to shoot for 2,000 words a day.

Some map out goals based upon their schedules and lives, but regardless make sure to set a goal above the minimum!  If you have problems meeting your goal, it's so much better if you have some padding.

Whatever you do, do your best to write every day.  The biggest factor in accomplishing this goal was simply that I wrote every day.  On days I felt bad, I wrote.  On days I got up late, and only had a half an hour to write, I wrote.

Tracking Progress
Tracking your progress is essential to reaching any goal.  I knew I needed a way to see what I have done, what I have left to do, and how I was doing.

I created a Google Doc's spreadsheet to keep count of my word count, with a few charts to visually show my progress.  It helped inspire me to write when i say my word count creeping up.  It kept me honest when I saw how close to falling below par I got on several occasions.  It helped me avoid procrastination when I saw how many words a day I would have to write to make up for a day off.

Backing Up
I have been using computers since I was twelve, and in that time I've had only one hard drive to crash.

Even so, I had set up Dropbox on my computer some times in the ages past, and I decided to use that synchronized the document so I could write at lunch. Think of Dropbox as a USB thumb drive plugged into the internet.  You can store files there and access them anywhere.  Furthermore, Dropbox has a wonderful client that installs on Windows, Mac and yes even Linux.  It synchronizes the local folder to your Dropbox accounts.  What that means is that I'd save the file in my Dropbox folder on my PC and viola it was already in the cloud without me having to take any other steps.

Towards the end of the month, I started getting ominous warnings of impeding doom.  My hard drive was dying!  I would have lost nano if I hadn't backed up to Dropbox because my hard drive failed towards the end of the month.  Since everything was in the cloud, I continued on without losing a comma.

Immersion

I immersed myself in Nano.  I listened to podcasts like Mur Lafferty's I should be Writing, Alastair Stephens' Story Wonk Nano, and the crew at Writing Excuses.  Both Story Wonk Nano and I should be Writing produced a once-daily podcast offering words of encouragement and story ideas.

Daily Goals

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,

Or what's a heaven for?

Those infamous words, published in 1855 by English poet and playwright Robert Browning, frame my thoughts on goals.  As I stated before, i shot for 2,000 words a day.  I started strong.  In the first seven days, only two days I wrote less than my 2,000 words a day goal.  Then life happened.  I managed to pull out  a 2,000 words or more only nine more days the rest of the month.

Remember, what I said about setting goals too low?  I set my goal daily goal at 2,000 but averaged only 1,784 words a day, a scant 117 words more than the Nano Minimum!  Because I set my goal above the minimum, I finished Nano three days early, and never was behind. 

What Helped Me

When i wrote, i didn't listen to my editor.  I didn't fix spelling mistakes. I didn't go back and rewrite and tinker, as I am wont to do.  I put notes in the work saying "make sure you reference this in the story before this point"  and "find a cool Russian surname here."

I allowed myself to suck.  You see, it's OK to be bad.  Bad you can fix in editing. You can't fix what doesn't exist.  I didn't try to write beautiful prose in every sentence, I just told a story, giving myself permission to jot it down knowing I'd go back later and clean it up.

I also wrote out of sequence.  If a scene was in my head, I wrote it.  This causes some confusion, but also helps get the creative juices flowing.

Analysis

While I wrote every day, I didn't write 1,667 every day.  The chart below shows how inconsistent my daily word count was.  thirteen of the thirty days I was below par, including the last three days of the month.  I finished my 50,000 words on the 27th, so I took my foot off the gas, so to speak.

This chart shows my total word count versus par.  It shows how ahead or behind I was.  I never got behind, but I came precariously close at least twice. It felt a lot closer to failure than the graph shows.

This graph shows the average daily word count by day of the week.  Notice that Sundays and Thursdays were always below par.
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This chart shows what my daily word count looked like when compared to the par of 1,667.  The bars below the line are good, as they put me ahead.  The bars above the line are bad, in that I didFor the 1855 poem by Robert Browning, see Andrea del Sarn't meet the daily goal.

 The following chart compares the values of this table

Daily Word Count
Highest	4,150
Lowest	298
Median (e.g. Middle)	1,799
Mean (e.g. Average)	1,784
Daily Goal	1,667