This is the single most important lesson that NaNoWriMo has to teach you. Learning this has helped me more in my writing than any other class, book or article I have ever read. When writing a first draft of anything, article, novel, short story… Just keep writing. Do NOT go back and reread what you have written before. No exceptions.

You forget a major detail? You notice a massive plot hole? Write yourself a note and go back and fix it later. There will always be things to fix, holes to fill. If you try to fix them as you go, you’ll just end up wasting your time. First get all the way to the end of the story and then, with a clear picture of everything that needs to be fixed, you can start to make corrections and changes. Changing a work in progress is like trying to fold your laundry while it’s still spinning in the dryer. It’s just going to get tossed around again… stop wasting your time.

This used to be a huge crutch of mine. I used to go back and re-read the entire story before I started each new writing session. Not only is this a waste of precious writing time but I also ended up changing things over and over again as the story moved on. Now I go all the way to the end and only start to go back and fix once I’ve passed The End at least once.

You’ll be making discoveries about your story and your characters throughout the entire first draft. Problems will fix themselves, fixes themselves will become problems. Until you’ve got the bones of the story down in their entirety, you aren’t qualified to do any plastic surgery.

As Dory says, “Just keep swimming!”