NaNoWriMo Week 4 – Beginning of the End

It’s day 22 of NaNoWriMo, with just over a week to go until the madness ends. You’ve probably already hit the Week 3 Wall and knocked your way through, so chances are that if you’ve come this far, you’ll keep going until November 30th. So congratulations if you’ve stuck with it. If you haven’t, don’t worry, there’s always next year (unless you want to write a novel under your own steam, which is fine, too!) However, three possible problems may face you at this point, and that’s what we’re going to look at today:

The Over-Achiever

You may find that your story has blossomed way beyond your control and at 36,000 words or so, you’re only a third of the way in. That’s okay! 50,000 words is just the minimum – your novel is expected to be longer than that anyway if you’re looking at eventually publishing it. But if you’re finding it difficult to keep track of a myriad of sub plots, then you can always scan through what you have already to check how your plot lines are shaping up. You may have included one (or more) that just aren’t going anywhere. Highlight it/them in a different colour, and you can modify or remove it/them in December!

Too little, too late?

You may find that your story doesn’t seem to extend to the length of a novel. It could be that the story you want to tell is better suited to a novella or even a serial, but if you’re determined to make it past the 50k mark with your existing story, then you could always try editing (shock horror!) what you’ve written so far. I know the accepted wisdom is that you just plunge ahead, slapping down words and not bothering to look at what you’ve done until December, but there’s nothing anywhere that says you can’t increase your word count by expanding earlier sections. Perhaps a character needs to divulge a little more back story, or maybe a few more descriptions are in order to make your locations really stand out. You could try checking your plot lines to see if there is one that can be expanded further – maybe the story will go in a whole new direction, or maybe the new subplot will just add extra depth (and words) to the novel.

Fallen Behind

Finally, maybe you’re still furiously scribbling but you’ve fallen drastically behind. Don’t stress – life happens, and there’s no point trying to work yourself silly to crank out 5,000 words a day just to catch up. If you’re desperate to hit the 50,000 word target then go for it, but if not, slow down and write your story at your pace. It doesn’t matter if you don’t get your 50,000 words until the middle of January – you’ve still written 50,000 more words than most other people will ever manage. NaNoWriMo is designed to get your writing, and if that’s what you’re doing, then that’s all that matters.

Now get to it – you’ve still got a few days left before you can down tools!

Image courtesy of NaNoWriMo