NaNoWriMo Preparation: Part 4 – Do’s and Don’ts, and Permission to Enjoy It

Let’s talk about how NaNoWriMo actually works, and why so many writers struggle with it. Because understanding the history of the thing helps you understand why the do’s and don’ts are what they are.

National Novel Writing Month began in 1999 in the San Francisco Bay Area. Twenty-one people took part that first year – friends of the founder, Chris Baty, who had written a novel himself in a single frenzy of a month and wanted to prove it could be done. The idea was simple and slightly absurd: write 50,000 words in thirty days. Fifty thousand words is not a long novel, but it’s a whole novel-shaped thing – roughly 170 pages – and it’s a lot more than most people write in a lifetime, let alone a single month.

The challenge spread. By 2010, more than 200,000 people were participating. And from the very beginning, NaNoWriMo was built on a specific, slightly mischievous philosophy: quantity over quality. Chris Baty’s book, No Plot? No Problem!, the unofficial bible of the movement, tells writers in no uncertain terms that their goal is not to write a good novel. Their goal is to write a novel. Period. A terrible, messy, wonderful, lopsided, occasionally magical novel that no-one will ever see – and that’s the point.

This philosophy infuriated a certain kind of writer. How dare you encourage people to write badly? How dare you celebrate 50,000 words of uncrafted prose? And there’s something in that criticism – the first draft of a NaNoWriMo novel is not, in most cases, going to be publishable. It’s not even going to be good. But that was never the point. The point was always the other thing. The point was that writing a novel is possible. The point was that anyone can do it. The point was that the fear of writing badly – the fear that stops most people from ever writing anything at all – could be switched off for thirty days, and that doing so was not just productive but joyful.

And here’s the part of the history that the celebratory posts often skip: NaNoWriMo has always been as much about community as it is about word counts. From those first twenty-one friends in San Francisco, to the meet-ups and write-ins in every city, to the forums where writers encourage each other in the small hours, the challenge has always been fuelled by people writing together. Writers are solitary creatures by default, and NaNoWriMo gives them a rare thing: a month where the whole world is doing it with them. The do’s and don’ts of this post are, in large part, about recreating that community feeling – even if your only community is a single writing buddy on the other side of the internet.

Let’s start with what to do. These are the habits, from the pragmatic to the philosophical, that carry writers across the finish line.

Do set yourself a realistic daily target. Fifty thousand words divided by thirty days is roughly 1,667 words a day. That’s the famous number, and it’s a good one – but it’s not the whole story. Some days you’ll write more, some days less, and some days the number won’t happen at all. So set your daily target, know it, and then treat it as a guide rather than a judge. If you write 800 words on a day when life has you by the throat, that’s 800 words closer. That counts. That’s a win. Don’t let the perfect daily number steal the good from the decent.

Do write first, clean your desk never. The great lesson of NaNoWriMo, the one that rewires your brain permanently if you let it, is that the writing comes first and everything else can wait. The email can wait. The washing-up can wait. The world can wait. Your job, for however long of the day, is to put words on a page. Nothing else is more important than that writing time. It sounds extreme. It is extreme – and it’s also why NaNoWriMo works. It’s a month where you give yourself permission to be single-minded, and the writing gets the best of you instead of the leftovers.

Do use whatever tools keep you moving. Word sprints – where you write as fast as you can against a timer – are the classic NaNoWriMo tool. Fifteen minutes, five hundred words, then a break. The timer silences the inner critic, because there’s no time to revise. There’s barely time to think. You’re just moving. Explore the writing sprints, the write-ins, the wildly popular “word wars” where two writers race each other to a target. All of them are games. All of them work. The trick is to find the game that makes you want to play.

Do keep your premiseThe premise is the general description of a novel's idea. It's the basic story or concept. A two to three sentence description of your plot or core argument. somewhere you can see it. We did the work in the last post – the sharp, single-sentence summary of your whole novel. Now keep it visible. When the middle turns to fog, read it. Remind yourself why you’re here. The premiseThe premise is the general description of a novel's idea. It's the basic story or concept. A two to three sentence description of your plot or core argument. is your compass, your lighthouse, your letter back to the version of you who was excited enough to begin. Trust it.

And do write the scenes you’re excited about, out of order if you need to. This is a lifeboat. If the scene you’re supposed to be writing feels like a wall, don’t climb it – walk around it. Write the scene you’re burning to write. Write the ending. Write the big confrontation. You can thread the moments together later. The forward motion of the month matters more than the forward motion of your outlineAn outline is a map of all the events that make up your story. An outline is usually done before the first draft so the writer can map out all the structure points and identify any weak spots.

Now the don’ts. These are the habits that sink NaNoWriMo writers, and every single one of them is a version of the same mistake: forgetting that this is a first draft, and a deliberately rough one at that.

Don’t edit as you go. This is the number one killer of NaNoWriMo novels, and I cannot say it loudly enough. Your first draft is not the place for beautiful sentences. It’s the place for getting the story down. If you stop to polish every paragraph, you’ll be at chapter four when the month ends, and you’ll have nothing to show but a pile of perfect sentences that lead nowhere. Write it badly. Write it roughly. Leave the gaps – type [explain the magic system later] if you need to. The editing is a different month, and a different writer. You’re the writer for November.

Don’t compare your progress to anyone else’s. Someone will hit 50,000 words by the twelfth. Someone will be on day three with 80,000 words, which is its own fascinating problem. Don’t measure yourself against them. Your novel is yours. Your pace is yours. Your 30,000 words by the halfway mark is a triumph if that’s your pace. The only race that matters is the one against your own doubt.

Don’t go back and reread your early chapters. This seems masochistic, but hear me out. Rereading what you wrote in week one will do one of two things: either you’ll think it’s good and feel anxious about keeping that quality up, or you’ll think it’s terrible and feel despair about everything ahead. Both reactions are useless. The draft is not a thing to be judged yet. It’s a thing to be made. Keep making it. Judge it after November.

Don’t let the word count become a tyrant. The word count is a tool, not a god. It’s there to structure your month, not to define your worth as a human being. If you fall behind, fall behind with grace. If you catch up, catch up without gloating at the sky. A NaNoWriMo is a month of writing; it’s not an exam, and there is no prize for the burn-out of the highest-scorer. The number is a friend. Be careful it doesn’t become a whip.

And don’t, above all, let the perfect be the enemy of the done. You will not write 50,000 good words in November. You will not write 50,000 average words either, in all honesty – you’ll write somewhere between twelve and fifty thousand words of wildly variable quality, and that is the entire point. The perfect novel does not exist on November thirtieth. But a finished draft – a lumpy, flawed, alive thing with a beginning, a middle, and an end – absolutely can. Let it be lumpy. Let it be flawed. Let it be alive. Done is better than perfect, and done is the only thing that matters.

Here are five guidelines that will hold the whole month together, the quiet pillars that keep you upright when the writing stops being a holiday and becomes a habit.

First, build yourself a routine, but forgive yourself for breaking it. The routine is what carries you through the early enthusiasm and into the slog – same time, same place, same tools. But life happens. Work will explode. Children will be ill. You will, at some point, miss a day. That’s not a failure. That’s Tuesday. The guideline is not “never miss a day.” The guideline is “don’t let one missed day become a week.” Return to the routine. The routine will welcome you back.

Second, make writing social where you can. Find the people – online, in person, wherever – who are also writing this month. Connect with a writing buddy who’ll ask you, kindly, how your words are going. Share your word counts. Moan together on the bad days, celebrate together on the good. Community is the hidden engine of NaNoWriMo, and even the smallest dose of it will keep you going on the days when you don’t want to.

Third, take care of the machine. The machine is you. You are the one doing the writing, and the writing will be better – and more sustainable – if you sleep, eat, move, and look away from the screen occasionally. NaNoWriMo is a marathon dressed as a sprint, and marathons are run on fuel and rest, not on adrenaline and coffee. Hydrate. Use your hands for something that isn’t typing. Go for a walk. Come back. The words will still be waiting.

Fourth, lower the bar on the days when you need to. There will be days when 1,667 words is not happening. On those days, the guideline is to lower the bar, not to clear it. Write 300 words. Write 100. Open the document and write one sentence about what happens next. The point of the low-bar day is not the output. The point is that you showed up – that the streak, whatever its length, stays unbroken. The point is that you didn’t give up. That’s the whole game, really. Not giving up.

Fifth, remember the read-back rule. At least one day a week, read back a section of what you wrote – not to edit it, but to remember that you’re writing a story with people, conflictConflict is the struggle a character goes through in pursuit of a goal. It's what makes it harder for her to accomplish a task or make a decision in the novel. It's at the core of every scene and what has to be overcome for the character to achieve her goal. It can be both external (a plot conflict) or internal (a character arc conflict). Basically, conflict is what makes things emotionally harder for the protagonist to make choices that affect the plot of the novel. The opposition driving the entire plot of a story and presenting obstacles to the protagonist on a macro and micro level., and feeling. Six days a week you’re a word machine. One day a week you’re a reader, rediscovering why you loved this idea in the first place. The combination is what makes the month survivable. Starved of the story, the words become toil. Read a little of the story, the words become work worth doing.

First, don’t take the whole month as a personal referendum on whether you’re a real writer. NaNoWriMo is a public writing exercise with a word-count target. It is not a measure of talent. If you struggle, it doesn’t mean you have no talent. It means you’re doing one of the hardest things a human being can volunteer for. Be kinder to yourself than your inner critic is.

Second, don’t set yourself a handicap at the starting line. I’ve met writers who, before writing a word, decided they’d inevitably fail because they have a busy job, or small children, or a history of abandoning projects. This is learned helplessness. It’s a resignation you’ve chosen in advance. Don’t. Enter November like you mean it. Write the first week with your whole heart. Let the failures happen in real time, if they happen – not in your imagination before the race has begun.

Third, don’t neglect the other parts of your life entirely. I know, I know – the word count is the mission. But the month is survivable precisely because you remember there’s a beautiful world outside the document. The meal you share with your family matters. The walk in the rain matters. The sleep matters. Neglect your life and your writing will suffer for it, because your writing comes from your life, and a hollowed-out life produces hollow pages.

Fourth, don’t change your novel mid-stream every time you get a new idea. This one is pernicious, because the new idea always feels perfect – fresh, exciting, better than the thing you’re actually writing. That’s a trap. The new idea is fresh precisely because you haven’t hit the middle yet. The middle is where all ideas go to be tested. Commit to your premiseThe premise is the general description of a novel's idea. It's the basic story or concept. A two to three sentence description of your plot or core argument.. If a shiny new idea arrives, write it down in a notebook for later, and stay with the novel you’re already writing. November is not the month for novelty. It’s the month for follow-through.

Fifth, don’t forget what the whole thing is for. And this brings me back to the beginning of this post, and to everything this series has been building toward. NaNoWriMo is not about winning. It’s not about the word count, the badge, the status, the Instagram post. It’s about the experience of writing. It’s about rediscovering, in the middle of all the busyness and obligation and self-doubt of adult life, why you started writing in the first place. It’s about the joy. It’s about permission. It’s about fun.

First, NaNoWriMo is won with a system, not a spirit. Daily habits – a target, a routine, a social anchor – carry you further than inspiration ever will.

Second, don’t edit as you go. The first draft is for getting the story down. Editing is a different month, a different writer, a different task.

Third, the word count is a tool, not a tyrant. Fall behind with grace, catch up without cruelty, and never let the number define your worth.

Fourth, community is the secret engine. Even one writing buddy will carry you through the dark days. Find them. Connect. Write together.

Fifth — and this is the big one – give yourself permission to enjoy it. Having fun is not a bonus. It’s the whole point. Joy is the fuel that gets you across the finish line.

And so we reach the end of this little series – and the beginning of the real thing. Three days from now, give or take, you’ll be sitting down to write the first words of your novel. Words you’ve been preparing for. Words you’ve been thinking about in the shower, at your desk, on the bus. Words that belong only to you.

I’d like to leave you with this. The preparation is done. The idea is found, the characters are waiting, the world is ready, the premiseThe premise is the general description of a novel's idea. It's the basic story or concept. A two to three sentence description of your plot or core argument. is sharp, the settings are vivid, and the plan for the month is in your mind. All that remains is to enjoy it. I mean that literally, as a permission and a prescription: enjoy it. Do not let the word count turn this into work. Do not let the inner critic turn this into a judgement. Do not let comparison, or guilt, or the pressure you put on yourself, turn a month of storytelling into a month of suffering.

Because the finished novel is not the only gift this month gives you. The other gift is the month itself – the glorious, ridiculous, world-making joy of it. The weeks where you live half in your world and half in theirs. The midnight sentences that surprise you. The characters who take over. The day you pass twenty-five thousand words and feel not tired but alive. These are the moments that make it all worth doing. And the writers who get them, who bank them, who remember them, are the writers who come back year after year.

So here is my last piece of advice for this series, and it’s the only one that really matters: you are allowed to have fun. You’ve done the work. You’re prepared. And now the most powerful thing you can do for your novel, for yourself, for this whole strange glorious venture called writing, is to walk into November like it’s a party you were invited to. Write your story. Make a lovely mess. And enjoy every minute of it. Because this is what you wanted. This is why you started. This is the whole point of the thing.

The words are yours. November is yours. Go and have the time of your life.