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Tuesday 22 July 2014

Why does NaNoWriMo work?

In some ways, NaNoWriMo might seem a little extreme when you think that the aim of it is to write a novel in thirty days. Of course, it is possible to write a novel in thirty days, but what we have to think about is the quality of that novel. NaNoWriMo never claimed that at the end of those thirty days, your novel will be ready to send out to publishers - and if that's what you want, then NaNoWriMo or even the life as an author isn't for you.

If you plan on entering NaNoWriMo, you need to know that you can only begin to write the novel that you enter on the first of November - however, you can start to plan your next entry as early as the first of December. Creating biographies, taking notes and researching your plot aren't considered to be writing - so by getting this out of the way pretty early on, you are effectively freeing yourself up to simply write when the time comes. You can also take this time to design the cover of your book without any bother from the rules.

After you complete NaNoWriMo, you'll have the bare bones of a book and it'll still be nowhere near ready to show to a publisher - although a good publisher will know at this early stage if what you have is something that will fly for them or not. If you want to look halfway to being professional as an author, you'll be spending December editing what you wrote during NaNoWriMo. Sadly, editing in itself isn't just a case of correcting those pesky typo's that slipped through the net while your fingers were flying over the keys. It also involves taking out the unnecessary parts and clarifying those points that aren't as clear when read as they were when you were writing the book.

It's also a good idea to have someone else cast their eyes over your work at this stage as well because, even though you've checked through it, there are bound to be typos and plot flow problems that you have overlooked or that seemed right to you. It will also give you a chance to get used to criticism because you'll always get someone who doesn't like your work no matter how good it is.

When it comes down to the wire, I think it's important to see NaNoWriMo for what it is and that is the chance to spend a month in a supportive environment thrashing out the bare bones of a book that you can then refine with the hopes of getting it published at some point down the line. In addition to that, there are other things that you can get out of NaNoWriMo, like an idea of what it's like to have to write a certain number of words in so many days - for many unpublished authors, writing is just a hobby crammed into whatever spare time that they have... yet a published author will spend hours of their day furiously filling page after page with text to keep the interest of the fans that they have (and hopefully gain more).

One thing I dislike about NaNoWriMo has to be the fact that they ask for a synopsis right at the start. If you can, skip this step and come back to it once you have finished writing. The reason that I say this is because the way that you plan your book to flow when you start is often different to the end result - so it makes better sense to write it looking back as opposed to having to scrap it and start again because it's no longer relevant to your finished book.

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