It’s October. That means tons of writers everywhere are using the month to prepare for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) — Preptober if you will.
November is the month where all us insane writers set out to write an entire novel (or 50,000 words of said novel). I’ve attempted NaNoWriMo for four years, and in my most successful year I discovered the art of “backward NaNoWriMo”. It is my favorite-ist way of doing NaNoWriMo. Basically how it works is at the beginning of the month, when you’re excited about this project and blinded by the insanity, you write the most words. At the end of the month when there’s that thing called Thanksgiving and you’re exhausted from all the words, you’re writing less.
It really is brilliant (and not original—I’m honestly not sure who the credit goes to, so if it was you, give a shout out!) And let me tell you the first couple of days cranking out 3300 and 3200 words feels oh so good.
To make it a little bit easier to keep track of how many words you need to write when (and because I just really like checklists), I’ve created a printable for you! You can sign up for my newsletter for a free download for this tracker plus two others!
Are you planning on doing NaNoWriMo this year? Do you have any tips for success?
I love this. I typically do a count up, but like the idea of a countdown.
Such a great idea!
I used this schedule for this year’s NaNoWriMo, and I won on Nov. 27! Front loading the month REALLY helped!
So glad to hear it Ruth!
xo
—CK