How to WIN at NaNoWriMo: A Month in the Life of A NaNoWriMo Participant

The Fourth (& Final) Week 2.0

Week 4 Overview NaNoWriMo 2015, Nov. 22-30 (Bonus: an extra 2 days of writing [29th & 30th] going into the 5th week!)

• There's more to writing than just word count

• Finally trying skipping ahead a little to keep myself excited about the story and keep writer's block from setting in

• Finding myself making a mad dash to catch up over Thanksgiving break

• Got seriously ill (food poisoning?) and missed a day of writing on day 28, but got back in the game with a serious word count boost on day 29.

• Not worrying so much about cycling, but trying to write forward to win NaNoWriMo & worry about edits later

• Realized that the days of trying to write over the suggested daily word count of 1,667 words is what saved me when disaster (Murphy's Law) struck.

• Christmas comes early: I WON NANOWRIMO 2015!!! Going to try for more than 50K before the last day is over (ended up with final word count as shown below)

• The story's not over, but I see the end in sight and will continue writing daily as if NaNoWriMo is still on!

It's finally time for the fourth and final installment of my new excursion into the land of NaNoWriMo 2015. The last week of writing has perhaps been more revealing in terms of my stamina as a writer and the writing process itself.

So without further ado, let's get into the Fourth & Final Week 2.0!

There's more to writing than just word count

One of the greatest revelations I discovered while on the final leg of the competition was that word count isn't everything (even though you need 50,000 words to "win" NaNoWriMo). As I stated in my updates on the "It's Official: NaNoWriMo 2015 Participant" section of this How to WIN at NaNoWriMo story (see "Updates November 23rd & 24th" section, 3rd paragraph): I finally had an epiphany concerning the main villain in my story.

Yes, I was a little behind on word count for the day (under the recommended 1,667 words), but I discovered some major plot elements and how to tie them all together with the story that I had already written. Granted, I may have to go back and introduce him sooner in the story, but at least he's there and ready to flesh out now. As a result, I wasn't so bummed out that I hadn't reached my word count for the day; other fruits of my labor were ripe for the picking instead.

Finally trying skipping ahead a little to keep myself excited about the story and keep writer's block from setting in

In the spirit of setting caution to the wind—there's no more time for such trivialities when the final week of NaNoWriMo is upon you—I decided to jumpstart my writing productivity by skipping ahead to write some of the scenes that I had been looking forward to all along. This is a technique many writers—such as the #YAWordnerds and #RachelAaron—advocate. Up to this point in my story, I really had no need to skip ahead, but it was something I was really wanting to try.

Skipping ahead to write these "cookie" scenes, as they're sometimes referred to, is supposed to stir your creativity into becoming excited to push through any writer's block you may incur. While I was fortunate not to have many blocks in the course of writing Kitty Hero Chronicles, there were times that I was tired of writing and wanted it to just be over.

So I tried this skipping technique on one of the scenes I had been excited to write and ended up with some great content for the novel. I didn't use the scene exactly as written, mainly because the story ended up taking a different turn than I thought, but I was able to glean from the 1,000 or so words in the scene and insert them where they were actually needed in the story, something I wouldn't have been able to do if I hadn't skipped ahead. So I definitely advocate this technique if you're in the middle of a block or just need some excitement injected into your writing after a long writing streak.