5 Ways to Challenge Yourself During NaNoWriMo This Year
NaNoWriMo is great, but it isn’t for everyone. Perhaps you don’t have the time or energy for it right now. Or maybe this just isn’t how you work — there’s nothing wrong with being a slow writer. You don’t need NaNo to write a book.
At the same time, NaNo generates a lot of momentum in the writing community. It creates a wave that, if you get on it, will carry you forward. It would be a shame to sit on the sidelines and not take advantage of the extra motivation.
Why not take the opportunity to challenge yourself in a different literary way? Here are five things you can do if you’re not feeling like doing a full NaNo this year.
The obvious way to go about this is to lower the goal. Why not do a National Novella Writing Month this year?
Instead of aiming for the full 50k, you can write 10,000 or 20,000 words and finish a shorter story that can either become a base for a novel or can stand on its own too.
Particularly if you’re planning to write a series, starting with a novella can be a great way of testing the waters — both for your long-term interest in the characters and the world, as well as how hard it will be to find an audience for it. Finding out that nobody wants to read your 180,000-word epic is a lot harder than when it happens with a 15,000-word prequel novella.
If you have even less time on your hands, consider writing short stories. You can do one story per week at between 1,000 — 2,000 words. Experiment with different things or make all of them about the same character.
Short stories are great training grounds for writers for so many different reasons. The feedback loop is an order of magnitude shorter than when you’re working on a book.
You can do single-scene stories that feel more like chapters in a novel or more complicated ones. You can practice almost any storytelling technique by writing a short story.
Write Flash Fiction Every Day
In case you’re completely slammed, there’s still stuff you can do. Loads of people challenge themselves to write tiny stories every day. You can probably write one in less than 10 or 15 minutes. The important thing here is that you get to engage your writing and storytelling brain and practice every day.
If you take public transport to work, write a flash fiction piece about someone who’s on the same bus or train as you. Where does the man in the suit sitting in front of you work? Is he sweating because it’s hot, or because he expects his boss to yell at him as soon as he arrives at work? Perhaps he’s a secret agent following a drug dealer who is on the same train?
The more you write, the easier it will be for you to find interesting ideas. Perhaps you’ll discover the protagonist of your next novel while writing a very short story?
Read a Short Story Every Day
A few years ago, I worked on a different project during NaNo. I didn’t feel it quite fitted the pace of the challenge. Instead of writing, I decided to read one short story every day during NaNoWriMo. I felt like I wasn’t reading enough of them, and I could definitely read one every day.
It worked out pretty well. I finished the challenge and kept the habit going for many months afterwards. I ended up reading hundreds of new short stories because of this.
If you enjoy poetry, why not write a few lines of a poem or some lyrics every day? Instead of focusing on storytelling, use those to capture your feelings that day.
Write down whatever comes to mind in the spirit of NaNoWriMo. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but you have to finish it.
Create a Habit with Writing Analytics
The goal of all of the above is to establish a routine. The beginning is always the hardest, and that’s why starting during NaNoWriMo can help so can feed off the motivation of others. When NaNo ends, you’ll be in the best position to keep it going. One novella per month will become 12 per year. One short story per week will turn into 52 stories in a year’s time. One poem a day will easily become 365 poems per year.
If you’re planning to be writing anything this November, check out Writing Analytics. It’s a writing app designed to help you stay focused and create a sustainable writing routine.
The app is FREE to try until 4 December 2021 — plenty of time to kickstart your writing habit.
Use *this link* to sign up to make sure you get the extended trial!
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