You Must Know This One Secret to Crack NaNoWriMo

Mention autumn and it conjures up images of mellow weather, colourful landscapes, hot drinks and cosy blankets. To writers however, autumn is an exciting-scary phase of the year.

Exciting, because the National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo runs all of November, giving writers a chance to put together the first draft of their novel in 50 k words.

Scary because the stakes are high and even though the adage ‘it’s the participation that matters’ is bandied about, winning at NaNoWriMo is amazing in terms of writing progress and a boost of morale.

Preparation

The key to doing well anything lies in the preparation. Familiarising yourself with what NaNoWriMo is, how it works, what are the requirements and how to meet those requirements are requisite reading of course.

Once that is done, you would want to look at your resources, and we mean not just a word processor but also intangibles like dedicated writing time, an outline or at least an idea of what you would like to write about (go on, search through those writing notes from last decade) and the dedication to push through to the end.

Tips and Tricks

Next, come to the tips and tricks part. This is the time to comb through content on the world wide web on how to ace the challenge. World wide is very indicative of the kind of experiences you would read about.

This is also the time to be discerning, to ‘sift the grain from the chaff’ metaphorically. (Even the metaphors come in handy when you are struggling to finish your word goal for the day). There’s a limit to how much you can absorb in this phase of research. What you really need to understand is how the NaNoWriMo works for a writer, on a psychological level.

Grand Gesture is the secret to crack NaNoWriMo

Let’s go back a bit to your writing or work habits. You might have noticed you make good progress when there are fewer distractions and you are completely focused on the task at hand.

This kind of work is termed as ‘Deep Work’ by Cal Newport in his wildly popular book on living a meaningful life. NaNoWriMo gives you the motivation to simulate this intense focus day after day because you must write at least 1667 words each day.

We see you nodding your head. Wait, that’s not all.

According to Cal Newport, one effective strategy to get deep work done is through Grand Gesture. “By leveraging a radical change to your normal environment, coupled with a significant investment of effort or money, you increase the perceived importance of your task.”

Lo and behold, less procrastination and stronger motivation for you to finish writing 50 k words in 30 days.

Did you know that J.K.Rowling rented a hotel suite that cost her $1000 per day to finish writing Deathly Hallows?

This was a significant investment of money. You don’t have to move to a hotel just yet. (Ahem, if you could, you would have done that already. Or built that cabin in the mountains).

All you need to do is keep up your investment of effort all 30 days of the month of November. It sounds tough, it’s hard on many, many days and that’s precisely why it works, not the other way around.

It’s a psychological hack that will have you inching towards your goal. Signing up for NaNoWriMo is the first step to making this commitment.

Reminding yourself on a daily basis of it, through declaring your intentions to the world, surrounding yourself with writing paraphernalia, taping up that map of the setting of your novel near your dining table, drinking coffee out of the mug that declares ‘I am a best-selling author’ are all little ways to remind your subconscious of your grand gesture.

With this trick under your belt, we are sure you are going to ace NaNoWriMo this year.

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