A great author once told me that the biggest enemy of the writer is the blank page. While abstract, I firmly believe that they were right. There is no greater hurdle to a writer than having written nothing. Writers are driven by the need to create and overcome by the desire to fill the blank page. Because writing something is always better than writing nothing.

And such is the beauty of NaNoWriMo.  

When I first heard of NaNoWriMo nineteen years ago, my reaction was probably not unlike many young authors. Anyone who can write 50,000 words in 30 days is either certifiably insane or doesn’t have a life. I wondered how I would be able to write 1,667 words every day on top of my schoolwork, commute, classes and social life. How is that possibly conducive to good writing? How am I going to be a better writer because of this experience? Don’t they know that writers need naps?

But I soon learned the old motto that is whispered from the souls of  Wrimos all over the world in the late hours of the evening—don’t get it right, get it written. In the end, it doesn’t matter if you’ve written garbage. It doesn’t matter if your story doesn’t make sense or is filled with mistakes or is completely illegible. All that matters is that at the end of the day you wrote something. And writing something is always better than writing nothing. Because you can’t fix nothing. Words on a page will always have the potential to become something great.

NaNoWriMo gives you permission to be a terrible writer. Because terrible writers can always get better. Terrible writers can become great writers. I personally am a firm believer that no one can teach you how to write. You need to learn it by practice. You need to keep at it, even when it’s hard or seems impossible. Even when you’re stuck, you can write around it. NaNoWriMo teaches you to push yourself and to keep pushing until you make it.  

This is one of the perks for younger generations. Start writing now, start participating in things like NaNoWriMo. This will let you practice your voice, your tone and your writing style. Perfect it and keep writing until you get it right.  

My first three published novels were all NaNoWriMo novels. When I started writing my first novel “Damaged” in 2008, I had an idea in my head, characters plotted and even a rough plot line. But I had no idea where to start. I knew that I needed to get the first line down on the page, then keep at it until I wrote the first paragraph, then the first page, then the first chapter. I needed some motivation to get writing. I knew that the story I was hoping to write could be great if written correctly. But first I needed to get over the fear of writing the first line. I needed to give myself permission to write something horrible.

And looking back at my early drafts of “Damaged”, it was just that. It was a horrible mess of chapters that didn’t make sense and one-dimensional characters that weren’t fully fleshed out.  But that’s what re-writes are for! At least the first draft was written, and after only 30 days, I was 53,126 words ahead of where I started.

 

I learned many things during the years that I have been participating in NaNoWriMo. One of the biggest surprises was that competition is a strong motivator to me. I had no idea! I joined the forums and added “Writing buddies”, and soon I found myself updating my word-count every half an hour to beat my friends.

I found myself writing at odd times. I would write on the bus, in between classes—I even found myself jotting short snippets of plot or dialogue down during class. This started my life-long obsession with post-it notes, which is now defunct with the invention of the smart-phone (yes, I’m old, okay?)

Surprisingly I found that the more I wrote, the more I wanted to write. And the more ideas began to flow. It became easier and easier to write something, then keep going. When you write nothing, you have nothing to go on. When you start from nothing, there’s nowhere to go.

I also learned that finding your most productive time to write was key. To this day, one of my most productive times is between the hours of ten pm and midnight… and this is all thanks to my many (many) years of participating in NaNoWriMo. Struggling to push myself and meet that deadline, and keep those word counts up to where they should be before the clock strikes 12:01 am and a new day (and new wordcount) begins.

In closing, don’t be afraid of the word count. If you don’t make it to 50k in 30 days, you tried. You wrote something. And writing something is always infinitely better than writing nothing.