NaNoWriMo Tips: 5 Reasons to get ahead early on your word count

People always ask me for my tips for winning NaNoWriMo and one of my biggest is that you should make every effort to get ahead early and front load your word count. 

Here’s 5 reasons why:

1. Use your excitement! The beginning of any new story is exciting. You’re full of fire, you love your novel and everything is just so darn fun. You’d be foolish not to take advantage of that and use that spirit to get ahead on your word count early.
2. Life happens. Things come up. If you’ve got time to write in the beginning of the month, use it! You may need those extra words to make up for days later on when you won’t have a chance to get as many words down. If you’ve got a cushion of words to fall back on, a crisis won’t shut you down.
3. Understand the shape of your story sooner. Will your novel be longer than 50,000 words? (HINT: Most are.) Knowing that ahead of time is a great way to help you plan the work ahead of you and pace yourself to still finish on time with the higher word count. Might your story stall out at 10k? The farther ahead you are at the start, the better prepared you’ll be to deal with a premature ending and either add to your story or start a new one.
4. Get the boring parts over with. Beginnings? Fun to write. Climax of the story through to the end? Even more fun to write! The middle-y bits in between all that? Well, there’s a reason that’s the point when most writers quit. If you put in some extra work to push yourself past the exposition and set-up of your middle, you’ll leave yourself with a much easier time the rest of the month since you’ll have only the fun parts left to write.
5. Thanksgiving is the last week of November this year. Forget this at your peril! If you’re used to having that weekend off with a week to recover before the end of NaNoWriMo, you’ll be in for a rude shock. If you don’t want to spend your whole holiday weekend scrambling to catch-up and stressing to finish, try to get the bulk of your words written ahead of time so that you’ll be able to enjoy the holiday weekend basking in the glow of a job well done instead of a total panic.

So try your best to push yourself a little harder in the beginning. Write a few extra words each session and you’ll give yourself an easier time later in the month. Let’s be honest, the easier you make it for yourself in the latter part of the month, the more likely you are to complete your novel and win.

What strategies do you plan to use to win NaNoWriMo this year?