I’ve been doing NaNoWriMo since my senior year of high school. It was, regrettably, not a cool thing where it was part of class, though I’m pretty sure I let my teacher know I was doing it. (He was vaguely intrigued, I recall? Mr. Plooster, if you’re out there, add it to the AP course! If we can spend a quarter on Les Mis we can write a novel.)
It was a project titled A Queendom Fallen, and while I still have the manuscript, I ultimately ditched it. I never borrowed the characters (something I frequently do otherwise), I never reworked the plot, I never touched it again. But that’s okay, I still wrote the story I meant to, and I wrote a hell of a lot of it.
I did it for at least two years in college, since those were the years I wrote and published my first two books: The Rook and The Ram (the first two in a trilogy). My laptop also broke during November for one of those, leading to panic and computer lab trips and trying to figure out how to afford a new battery. (Another hot tip: make sure you have a solidly working laptop/computer before November starts.)
I’ve done it off and on in the years since. I’m proud to say I’ve won more years than I’ve lost, but I have lost some years, and I have skipped some years. I did it last year and plan to again this year. I mightily broke several of my own records last year, breaking 70k, because my at the time boyfriend told me I could go to “all I could eat and stuff in my purse” hot pot. Bribery works, folks.
I managed to talk my mother into doing it a few years ago. I’ve cheered other writer friends into doing it. I’m a staunch supporter of it, both because it teaches discipline in a very literal sink or swim approach, but also because many people say they could write a novel. I can’t find the quote now, or who said it, but there’s the common thought among all fields—that anyone could write a novel, they’d love to do it one day, because it must be easy and anyone could do it. (The writer’s response was that they’d love to do brain surgery one day. Just as casually.)
Anyone could do it, yes. But it is not easy and it is not a frivolous undertaking. And something like NaNoWriMo definitely proves that. Put your words where your mouth is, folks, and prove that everyone has a novel in them. (Which I also agree with, generally, but I do not believe everyone could write that novel.)
This past year, as mentioned in last week’s post of tips and tricks, I switched writing programs to Dabble. I’ve used Word, gdocs, Libre Office, and more in the past. They all have their pros and cons. Gdocs has availability and is web-based; Word is the standard; Libre Office is free. Scrivener is also highly touted by writers, but I found it to have too steep of a learning curve for me.
Dabble is more like gdocs, which is what I value most: it is widely accessible on any device, since it is web-based. (I do not like its mobile version, however, since it’s just a scaled-down regular version. Then again, I don’t like typing on mobile, anyway.) It has some organizational systems like Scrivener, like the ability to break things into chapters and scenes (and parts), but is far more slimmed down. It is newer, and there are still things they are aiming to implement, and things I think could really improve it. But as it stands, I’ve been a loyal convert, and use it for my blog posts as well as most of my novel writing.
Also, another small bonus: it has NaNoWriMo integration, so it automatically updates your wordcount on the site for you. I personally liked going back to refresh the page and update it every few dozen words, but that’s just me. It also hilariously bugged out last year, compounding the wordcount instead of adding onto what existed.
(That said, no matter what you use, ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR WORK. Save it in file format as well as chucking it into the cloud. Save it in multiple file formats. Save it in multiple places. Put it on a flash drive and only use that flash drive as a very tiny safe.)
I’m hoping to win NaNoWriMo again this year. I’ll be using Dabble again. There’s no reference link to put here, since they don’t have that system, but if it’s the same as last year, there’s a 14-day free trial, plus a 30-day free NaNoWriMo usage, so go check it out and give it a shot if you’re interested. The more prepared you are now, the better you’ll handle November. I promise.
