My NaNoWriMo inspirational newbie/first timer pep talk (National Novel Writing Month)

So my cousin is signed up for her very first NaNoWriMo this year. She is freaking out about it and ready to quite before we’ve even begun.

She’s worried that she doesn’t know what she is going to write about.

She’s worried she’s not a good enough writer.

She’s worried that she won’t hit 50,000 words.

And you know what? I’ll bet you have moments where you think the same thing. There are career writers out there with many more years and much more writing under their belts who think the exact same thing every time they sit down to write.

So this is for my friend and everyone who is doubting themselves and who isn’t sure that they can do it.

You can do it. Period.

Is this going to be the best book you have ever written? Probably not.

Will there be parts that are so bad that you are sitting there feeling like the worst writer ever? Definitely.

Is it going to be really hard? Of course! Otherwise everyone would have written a novel and would be eating bonbons by the pool by now. The fact that it is hard is what makes it worth doing. Think of how much more awesome you’ll feel when you accomplish what so many other people can’t or haven’t.

Let me tell you, when you cross that 50,000 word mark, you feel like king of the world. You feel powerful and more awesome than you thought possible. For months after the fact, you may be down about some silly thing and then it pops into your head “I did something amazing that few people have done. I am so awesome.”

And can I let you into a little secret? It feels awesome even if you don’t win. If you try your hardest and your hardest isn’t enough to win this year, that is totally OK.

Just take it a few words at a time. Maybe you say, I’ll see how quickly I can get to 10,000 words. Then you try for another 10 thousand once you reach that and so on. Don’t worry if you are behind other people, just compete against yourself.  Instead of focusing on the number, just make yourself write as much as you can in the month of November and if you make it to 50,000 that is amazing and if you poop out at 20,000 there is no shame at all in that. You wrote 20,000 words more than all your friends that just sat on their butts all month and that still makes you awesome.

(PS: There are people who will have reached 50,000 words within a day of the contest starting. Don’t let them bother you even though you, like me, will want to stab them. I like to pretend everyone who is ahead of me on word count is cheating and will be going to hell and that I am the only one actually doing real writing over here which is why I am behind. Lying to yourself is very effective.)

Let me tell you something about those 50,000 words. Some of them are really easy to write and some of them are jerks. Sometimes you whip up 2,000 words in a sitting and you didn’t even notice that time had passed and sometimes you sit there for 45 minutes and every word feels like you are drawing blood and you end up with 150 words at the end.

When that happens, just keep going. It will get easy again, I promise. When you are having a hard time of it, don’t be afraid to cheat. Take a break out of your story and let your characters talk about something you like, your favorite band or this funny thing that happened to your sister this one time. Whatever you feel like chatting about, no matter how irrelevant, let your characters chat about it. It all counts towards your word count and sometimes you realize that there is a way to work it back into your story after all and you find yourself right back on track.

The philosophy of NaNoWriMo is not just to write a novel in a month. It’s to write a laughably bad novel. Go into this thinking that the book will be horrible and you are in it just for fun because it takes a ton of the pressure off.

Lastly, you are about to take on a pretty big scary thing. By not quitting and by actually trying, you are already amazing and brave. Especially if it’s your first year, there is always room for improvement and maybe next time around you will try a different strategy.

There is something magical about just sitting down and writing and writing and not letting yourself stop. Suddenly you learn just how long a novel is but, more importantly, your brain starts to show you that it is capable of way cooler things than you thought it was. Suddenly you realize that story about your sister or that conversation about the band works perfectly and your story is off and running again and you work your sister into the book and she meets the band and when you look over it later you realize, OMG, this is kinda good. It will feel like someone else, someone talented (certainly not you, you think) wrote it and when you realize that the awesome person who wrote that *is* you, there is no better feeling.

And the parts that you re-read and decide you hate or don’t fit at all? Leave them in anyway. They add to the word count and, who knows, they may end up being part of another project you do int he future.

Remember, there are no rules. If you kill off a character and later think that was a bad idea, just unkill him in the next chapter and worry about the details later. The important thing about this contest is to just write and write as much as you can because you will learn more about the process by doing it in quantity than you ever will doing it in small bursts.

Besides, you aren’t alone. There are millions of other fools just like you and I all over the world doing the exact same thing. When you feel like the only person having trouble, let me assure you right now we are sweating it out just like you. The forums are a great place to find other people complaining about the same problems you are having. Read their posts, commiserate or feel smugly superior and then get back to the book.

And every time you hear about someone quitting or dropping out? You win a little more every time that happens because you stuck it out.

So my point is, yeah, it is scary. It’s absolutely terrifying: the fear of failure, the fear of sucking, the fear of embarrassing myself by not finishing but, frankly, all the fear is what makes it much more worth it when you prove yourself wrong and do it anyway.

The you that emerges from the other side of November will thank you for it.

Any other NaNo alumni want to share some advice for my friend or any other newbie who is getting scared?