NaNoWriMo Tip Two: Don't Look Back

So today's tip is based from a writer who can write novels. He is considered legendary in the world of publishing, and writing, and his advice is not to be taken lightly. Today's advice is from Stephen King, and in his published work A Memoir of the Craft. His advice from the book applies when a writer is writing their novel during NaNoWriMo:

DON'T LOOK BACK

Yes folks, that is key when you are writing a novel in one month. Don't go back to the beginning Just keep writing and writing until you feel you have finished the story. Now you don't have a completed novel, you have a finished draft. Don't look back at the story.

This is the reason as to why you shouldn't look back at the draft. If you keep going back to the beginning, you end up editing. Before you know it, you end up changing every single sentence in the story, and you will  will not hit the finish line. I normally have the habit of editing as I go, but during NaNoWriMo I have to break that habit. You need to break it too.

If you want, after you type up each chapter you can print out each one, and keep them in a small folder. Once you finish NaNoWriMo, don't look at that draft for at least one month, or more. Some authors I know will leave their draft for three months, then when they open it back up, it looks so horrible to them that they end up changing so much, and before they know it half of their story is covered in red. So don't look back, just finishing writing the darn thing.

I am not the only one who explains about not looking back. Check out this post from New York Times best selling author Veronica Roth of Divergent trilogy.

NaNoWriMo Tip One: Tune Off The Internet

Here is the next post I am putting for surviving through NaNoWriMo. (Once again these images I am using I do not own). When you start going into the writing cave for NaNoWriMo

TURN OFF THE INTERNET

Here is why I am telling you this, and I am speaking from experience. The first time I unofficially did NaNoWriMo in 2010, I kept getting onto twitter, and facebook, and I kept getting discouraged when I would see my friends getting such high word counts, and mine was incredibly low. I ended up writing half of one book, and half of another book, which I did end up finishing later on, I just have more tweaks to make to the characters to make them more original. 

That's one tip, don't get on social media too much. When you are in the writing cave, you stay in the writing cave. Turn off your cell phone, T.V., and turn off the internet. You don't need distractions when you are working on a craft. All it will do is distract you. You can pop in every now and then to wish your friends good luck and happy writing with their project, but try very hard not to get on the internet too much.

Prepare for NaNoWriMo

So in order to kick off the eve of NaNoWriMo, here are somethings to help the beginner get started. The key to NaNoWriMo is to write and don't go looking back at the beginning. Once Again (I don't own these images, no copyright infringement intended).

First off is know the audience you are going to write the book for. Young adult, Adults, or middle school. Then know what sub-genre you plan writing. If you plan on writing a historical book, you'll have to heavily research the time period that you plan on writing.

The second thing you'll want to do for your story is plot the actual storyline. Every author has their own way of doing their storyline. Some like to use the old English literary style that they taught us back in elementary school for writing stories, a plot flow chart.

Another way to plot is by making a big sheet of and making a nine box flow chart of the sequence of events to happen.

Some will even do it the old school way and a make flashcards, and post them on a board so they have something to refer back to as they are writing the story. I used to do it this way.

I normally write all of my stories in a word document, but this year I'm going to try something different, I have heard a lot of who use the writing software Scrivener for drafting their manuscripts, then exporting them to word to fine tune it. Since NaNoWriMo offers a discount to NaNoWriMo winners, I'm going give it a try. It's suppose to help writers, and it allows for us to to move chapters around easily, make notecards for plotting, and export into formats for self publishing.

When I start using it for NaNoWriMo I'll make a post about it with some pictures.

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