NaNoWriMo Pep Talk: the first weekend

Today is the first Friday of November, and many of you may be planning ahead as to how to spend your weekend in regards to NaNoWriMo. Have you set goals yet?

Regardless of your word count at this moment, this weekend is a good one to get ahead in writing. It's still early in the month, so energy and creativity are still high. Use them to fuel your word count so you can start this next full week with a positive outlook. If you can break 10,000 words by the end of the day on Sunday, you'll be right on track for the rest of the month.

This is still the exciting stage of NaNo. The honeymoon phase, really. You've been waiting a year to get to this point. Maybe you've even had a story rattling around in your head that whole year, just waiting for November 1st to appear on your calendar so you can scribble away at it. Use that excitement to fuel your word count.

The minimum word count for NaNo is 1667 words each day. That will allow you to end on November 30th with a word count of 50,010 words. But it's just the minimum. If your excitement and energy and creativity is flowing freely right now, and you find yourself writing 2,000 or 3,000 or even 4,000 words in a day, keep at it! And don't use those large word count days to give yourself a day off later. Sure, you can use it that way, but if you stick with the minimum every day, and ignore any extra you do, you won't fall behind. And if you don't fall behind, you'll find it easier to stay motivated.

Keep writing. Set high goals for this weekend, next week, and the rest of the month. Now is your time to write a novel, and I know you can do it!

Happy scribbling!