I know that some of you out there are as OCD as me when it comes to trying to figure out how far along you are in National Novel Writing Month so I decided to share my own little personal calculator.

I set it up as an .xls file so it will work in Open Office, Microsoft Excel or Google Docs, depending on what you use.

It is very simple. All you do it type in your word count each day and then it calculates your running total, percentage done, whether you are on track to hit 50,000 words at the end of the month etc. It’s a pretty useful little tool that is very simple to use and gives you a lot more info than the little widgets and counters around. It’s also a great way to motivate yourself to stay on track.

If you want to add, share or customize this, please feel free to! I only ask one favor. Please keep my url on the spreasheet as credit so that I at least get some traffic for my work. Or just link to this page!

You can download this calculator here: NaNoWriMo Advanced Word Count Calculator.xls

If you find this tool useful, thanks are appreciated in the comments below. Thanks and happy NaNo-ing!

(Want to be my writing buddy? You can friend me on the NaNo site here. Just make sure that you are logged in before you click.)

#12 Have fun!

I know, cheesy, right? Not so.

There is something completely ludicrous about proposing to write a book at all, let alone writing an entire book with no plan and in 30 days. Embrace that ridiculousness. It is much easier to write something light and fun in a situation like this than War and Peace so keep that in mind. This isn’t to say that you should steer away from high drama or horror or whatever is your bliss. But make sure that you are writing something that you are enjoying writing, not something that you feel like you should be writing because its good for you or whatever. I have a great idea for this really depressing book about child abuse. I am definitely not even considering that as an option for NaNo.

In the end, NaNo is not about producing good fiction (though sometimes it does). It is about proving to yourself that you can do it, that you can write a book. It doesn’t have to be a good book, that will come later in revisions. All that matters is that you set out to do this near impossible task and accomplished it which is something to be totally proud of.

If a book about crime fighting monkeys is what gets you to 50,000 words while your intellectual allegory about rape stalls you at 5,000 words, go with the monkeys. Pulitzer will forgive you.

We start at midnight tonight. So I have to ask. . . are you in?

#11 Write what you like.

Forget about writing what you know. Write what you like. No Plot No Problem suggests writing up a list of your favorite things from the very specific (sassy old people who may be wiser than you might think) to the more general (love triangles, kittens) from books, movies, TV whatever. The stuff on this list is what you will be good at writing. If you get stuck, pick something from that list and throw it into the story. Your love for the topic will be like a cheat sheet for writing about it.

By the same token, don’t write in things you hate. I cannot stand movies where the guy falls in love with another girl right before he is about to get married to the first girl and then decided to just marry the original girl because she is the safe choice. I HATE that. Hence, I would be terrible at writing it because, since I don’t like it, I don’t understand it and thus would not be good at writing it.

Writing what you know is also handy. It is much easier to write about a cubicle monkey if you are one but it can also be creatively stifling if you feel like your character cannot do anything you yourself have experienced. Use your personal experience to get in a good paragraph of description of the main character’s room but don’t let it hold you down if you feel like the room should eat him.