How to NaNoWriMo
By: Jennifer Ng
Tags: Nonprofit, NaNoWriMo, Fiction, Writing

The author writing at the airport

Decide on November 7 that you’re going to do NaNoWriMo after seeing it on LiveJournal. That seems fun, you think. Write about yourself, because you’re 21 and that’s what you know best. Finish by November 30.

Don’t do NaNoWriMo for more than a decade. Not because you don’t like writing. Not because you don’t have ideas. But because you don’t think that you’re a writer.

Experience a typical identity crisis about everything — who do you want to be, where you want to go, where you have been. Read the lines below your photo in your fifth grade yearbook — “In twenty years, I would like to be writing stories.” Ignore the second line.

Tell yourself to stop ignoring your ten-year-old self.

At a book signing, you tell an author, “I am trying to be a writer.”

She interrupts you and touches your arm. “You are a writer.”

Take that as a sign. Devote yourself to learning about writing. Beyond the posts that you write on social media or your blog. Join a writing group. Take a class from nearly every school in San Francisco. Learn about writing workshops. Learn that there’s no magic behind it. It’s all about sitting down and writing.

Think about the stories you have always wanted to write. About family. About childhood bullying. About bad choices. About social media. About being Asian American. About being not understood. About all the girls seeking asylum. About all the scenes you would play in your head watching passengers at the airport. About dreams.

Remember NaNoWriMo. Look it up and find out how it’s evolved. Sit down and write. Join the website. Join the write-ins. Show up. Be awkward and shy. But keep showing up. Try to make friends in the forums. Fail, of course, most of the time.

Squeeze in writing into all moments. Your day job swallows up your time, and your mental space isn’t as open as it used to be in your early twenties. Care about quantity, not quality. Write on the train. Write at the airport. Write at lunch in between gulps of soup. Write in the window of a hat shop. Write on your phone. Write in the thirty minutes before midnight. Write as drowsiness overtakes your body. Write through the pain of not knowing what to write. Write because you want to reach your word count. Write because you always achieve your goals, even if nobody knew about them. Write constantly every day in November, but almost never other days of the year.

Impulsively buy a ticket to the Night of Writing Dangerously, an event where writers come together to write together in a ballroom for multiple hours. Know nobody there. Post a forum post in your home region that you’re there with your stuffed dinosaur. Go in with no expectations, except to eat candy and write. Dress up. Drag a keyboard, mouse, and laptop stand. Chat with a few. Clap when writers reach 50,000 words during the event. Indulge in dinner and dessert. Volunteer one year, pulling power strips across the ballroom. Convince your partner to do NaNoWriMo, only because a paired ticket is cheaper. Learn that you’re one of the few writers who isn’t writing genre. Bid frivolously in the auction. Realize that it’s less about the event, but that you’re with a community writing together. Community matters. But you’re still sad when the Night of Writing Dangerously ends.

Writing Dangerously

Give yourself permission to dedicate your time in November to writing.

Know that you spend the rest of the year not writing, so this is the perfect excuse. Don’t believe in the daily writing habit. Break all rules.

When November 30 arrives, always just go over slightly by 50,000 words. You have never lost. You have always won. But you know this is only the beginning. Generating words is easy.

In between Novembers, workshop a novel constructed from two NaNos. Workshop the novel through a writing group. Pull out short stories from a NaNo. Work with a developmental editor. Revise a chapter to submit to writing applications. Change the point of view to the third person. Never touch it for the next year.

Think about what you would do for the next NaNo while never writing a single word for an outline. Get inspired by the words you read — advice columns, novels, short stories, experimental prose. Write the ideas down in your digital notebook. Tell yourself to plan for next year. Never do.

Get asked what you did over Thanksgiving break. Rarely ever say that you write. Because it has become part of your routine and your habits.