...without going (too) mad, without it eating your life (much), and without ending up with a fifty thousand word chunk of terribleness you can't bear to look at let alone edit.
well, that's the idea anyway.
I can't say I'm an expert here, although this is my fifth try and I've managed it each time before (sort of. The Callow ended up way longer than I thought it would be, but I managed sixty thousand words before December 1st). I have, however, picked up a few tricks that work for me that I think could work quite well for other people too.
1) don't think of it as fifty thousand words. An essential part of not freaking out when it comes to project management is breaking the task down into little chunks. Fifty thousand words is a lot. Too much. When I think about writing fifty thousand words (actually, I usually think of it as sixty, for reasons I'll come to later) I break out in a cold sweat. The trick is to change your frame of reference. You can write two thousand words, right? If I were to say to you "Write me two thousand words before the end of the day and I'll give you this lovely puppy*" you could write me that 2000 words, and you'd do it with a smile on your face (mainly because of the puppy). 2000 words a day is 60,000 words by the end of the month. I'm a dreadful wordcount watcher. I have to fight my urge to check wordcount every 6 minutes to see how much more I've got to do. This year I've built my novel's structure around wordcount. Each segment should be 1000 (or a little bit more) words. Thus I'm not writing 2000 words a day, I'm writing two segments, and 30 days from now I'll finish the last two and be done with the whole thing, the end.
2) write every day. every day. It's awfully easy to think you're a bit ahead and you can catch up later. It's awfully easy to think you've got too much to do. It's also a murderer of productivity. A day off from writing takes you out of your groove. Even if you don't write much, even if your pattern is for huge writing binges, write something every day. If you've got time to check your mail, you've got time to lay a paragraph down. November of last year was a really horrible month, for reasons I won't go into. I wrote every day precisely because of how easy it would have been to not write every day. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but it's how it felt.
3) Don't worry. Time you spend worrying is time you don't spend writing. If you're character is in a plot hole, don't spend an hour selecting the best shovel to dig him out. If necessary, move on and write the next bit, or a later bit, or something else. Writing that will give you the idea you needed to fix the earlier bit, and you can go back at fully strength, rather than gnawing away at yourself with the refrain "this is SHIT, this is SO SHIT, I'm a fucking HACK and everyone HATES ME" running through your head. Write what you can, come back to what you can't.
4) It's not your family's fault. Families tend to be understanding of nano-time, but there are occasional points where you're trying to work out how to make sure the sword of Ravengate gets to the top of Shard Mountain in time for it to be found by the protagonist and the last thing you need is someone asking you to unload the fucking dishwasher. Don't snap at mothers, wifes, girlfriends, or roommates. Do what they ask, then retreat back to your room. By the way, the Sword Of Ravengate was brought to the mountaintop by cultists of Beth-Shanna who wished it to house the spirit of their Unspeakable Lord. The ritual failed... or did it?
5) Alcohol is not your friend, as much as you think it is. Caffeine is your friend. Alcohol makes you more daring, but it can also make you sloppier. Caffeine gives you a sharper edge, even if it can also lead to you feeling like you were buried in a litterbox by one of the cats.
There. Advice. Probably bad advice.
Good luck to anyone foolish enough to be nano-ing this time around.
*puppies not available in all (or most or any) areas
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A puppy?
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