NaNoPrep: Staying Motivated

 

NaNoWriMo is made up of a weird combination of days of intense inspiration and days of no motivation. Some days the book seems to write itself. And some days…it doesn’t. But, inspired or not, writers need to write every single day of November in order to win. The question is, how do you soldier on when motivation is gone? How do you keep writing instead of hiding under the blankets and eating chocolate?

Be Aware: The first step to overcoming these days of low motivation is to realise that they are going to happen, regardless. You’re not going to feel like writing every single day. But you can plan ahead of time so you have some strategies to help you through those bad days when they arise.

Find Your Support Group: Find yourself some other people doing NaNo and stay in contact with them during the month. You can do it on Facebook, on the NaNoWriMo forums, or on blogs. It’s so much more fun to do NaNo with a group of people, and on those days when you don’t feel motivated you’ll have a cheer squad to spur you on.

Utilize Word Wars: What is a word war? It’s a race with other writers to see who can write the most amount of words in a certain amount of times. The prize? A pile of words added to your novel. You’d be surprised at how quickly you can write when you’re competing against other writers. This is another thing your support group can help with.

Write or Die: Not literally. There’s an online program call Write or Die, which is like an online word processer. Except it eats your words if you stop writing. It’s like a word war, only instead of racing against friends, you’re racing to keep the computer from deleting all your hard work. Don’t like the idea of losing your words? You can choose other consequences instead. It can be great for forcing yourself to write through a mental block.

Rewards: Give yourself a reward for writing a certain amount of words. If you write x amount of words, give yourself five minutes on Facebook or Pinterest. Or eat some chocolate. Or watch a video on YouTube. Little rewards can be so motivating and can give you just the boost you need to get through a rough patch in your writing.

How do you stay motivated when you don’t feel particularly inspired? What’s your best tip for a good writing day?

Have you visited Gossiping with Dragons on Facebook yet? There’s plenty more motivating and inspiring things over there.