In which the fabulous Aimee talks to us about Nano

Only two more days until NaNo!! Waht is this. I'm not ready!! But before you start panicking, we have another NaNo veteran, Aimee, who's going to tell us about how to have fun with NaNo instead of stressing.


Having Fun With NaNoWriMo

We’re days away from that time — NaNoWriMo. A month of insanity and novel-writing and support and stress and tears, and pretty much everyone enjoys it. You could look anywhere in your circle of writerly blogs and find a good handful of posts about NaNoWriMo. How to write more, how to win, how to write faster, how to plan. With only a few days between us and November, people are going crazy getting everything in place.

I’ve already blogged about that on my own blog — here — so I’m not going to come up with more advice for you, especially since we’re so close.

I’m gonna remind you to have fun.

Now, I get it. You want to win NaNo. You want to succeed at NaNo. I want to succeed at NaNo just as much as anyone else. But sometimes I can get caught up in failing, or not writing fast enough, or even the dreaded someone else wrote 50k in the first week and I’m not even halfway yet sort of thing that’ll inevitably go through your head. This happens. NaNo is a big deal. But at the same time…what’s the point? To win?

You’ll get a big NO from me because I do what I want.

NaNo is about fun. NaNo is about putting words on the page. In fact, NaNo is about putting quickly-written, completely imperfect words and sentences on the page. Spewing out all your random thoughts even if they don’t have anything to do with the plot. Random plot twists. Brand-new characters you didn’t anticipate. NaNo is about writing what comes into your brain.

It’s also about writing with people. Word wars! Support! Discussing how best to murder characters! People — other writers — are the very best part of NaNo, and as someone who’s ultra-competitive believe me when I say that it’s no fun at all the moment you start comparing.

It’s not about writing a whole entire novel.

It’s not even about writing the full 50k.

It’s not about writing faster than someone else unless you’re warring and it motivates you and then yeah, I guess it could be.

It’s not about writing better than everyone else.

Or writing to get published.

It’s about writing. Writing with people. Writing a story you love and hopefully one that’s fun for you. It’s about creating a first draft that definitely sucks, and loving it anyway. It’s a wild ride the whole way through, and there will definitely be stressful moments along the way. But don’t let that get to your head.

Take a breather.

Enjoy NaNoWriMo.

   Aimee Meester is a reader, writer, watcher, and lover of all things weird and/or sci-fi. When she's not busy reading, writing, watching, or otherwise procrastinating she's a homeschooled extrovert who happened to find the internet and build up a bizarre little blog of her own. Her love for Les Mis knows no bounds.

Go check her out, guys, she's the coolest. Are you ready for NaNo? Shoot me a comment below so we can scream in terror together. Also, what do you think of the new blog design?