You might well think I’m insane to already be considering my next attempt at NaNoWriMo, but it turned out that writing a draft of a novel wasn’t as hard as I expected, especially with the bonus pressure of a deadline and people watching me.
But I also learned a lot from the experience and come November 1 next year, I’ll be doing some things differently. In case I forget these personal pearls of wisdom, I thought I’d make a list:
- Plan my novel more. This year, especially because of the spontaneous, last-minute decision to do NaNoWriMo, I just followed the plan in my head. That means that lots of events are skipping all over the place and there’ll be a lot of work to restructure stuff. Plus I finished the story at about 45,000 words and then wrote some extra scenes that had occurred to me later.
- Include a chapter outline in this plan. My current novel draft has no chapter breaks. Help!
- Pay more attention to using dialogue. Hopefully by this time next year I’ll be much better at writing dialogue, and thus be able to include more of it. I wrote a number of scenes in this novel that I’m sure would be stronger with more dialogue and less narrative.
- Be better prepared and scheduled. It was more luck than good management that got me enough time to finish my novel draft this year. Whether it’s setting aside blocks of time, whole weekends, or a little time each day, I’d be much happier if I was continuously above the target words per day rather than struggling to catch it from week two.
[...] of at least 50,000 words during November) I know that I can do it. I’ve also got a list of four ways to make NaNoWriMo easier this time round and I’ll be able to do most of these, especially planning better before I [...]