3 Things to Try Before You Quit NaNoWriMo

Today I almost quit NaNoWriMo.

I missed writing yesterday, and then again this morning, and I went from feeling pretty good about my work to not wanting to ever look at it again. The thought of catching up (a mere 3,000 words or so), made me want to lay down and watch re-runs of The Office and forget I’d ever heard of National Novel Writing Month.

How did I get to this point?

I started making excuses and giving myself permission not to write. A little voice inside my head was saying things like, “You can keep writing into December,” “Trying to meet a specific word count every day stunts your creativity,” and, “If you don’t feel like writing, you shouldn’t push it.”

As I’ve mentioned before, excuses can be good for writers, but in this instance, my excuses got the better of me. I was giving myself permission not to write when the going got rough!

Thankfully I did three things that got me writing again. I thought I’d share these things in the hopes they may help others who may be contemplating giving the whole NaNo thing up.

3 Things to Try Before You Quit:

1. Seek Support From the NaNoWriMo Community:

One of the great things about NaNoWriMo is that you have a built in community to support your efforts. If you’re feeling discouraged, you can always visit the forums on NaNoWriMo.org to find other writers to commiserate with or ask for advice. As a bonus of signing up for the NaNoWriMo.org site, you also receive pep talk emails. I found the pep talk email that arrived in my inbox today particularly useful. It was written by author Chris Cleave and it reminded NaNo’ers that writing is not an easy undertaking (for most people). Of course we all know this, but it provided just the jolt I needed. Writing is hard, that’s why I want to quit NaNoWriMo. Makes sense!

I also used Twitter to get myself back on track. To motivate yourself, take a read through the NaNoWriMo posts on Twitter (under the hashtag #NaNoWriMo). I did this today and found that there were a lot of people out there feeling the same way as I was, and many of them were doing their best to catch-up.

2. Tell Somebody Who’s Been Witness to Your NaNo Journey:

If you’re thinking of quitting, test it out by talking someone who has been watching your NaNoWriMo journey from afar. Even better, choose a person who has been affected by your NaNo’ing: a friend that you’ve had to bail on in favour of writing, a spouse who has had to pick up your share of the house cleaning duties. The people we are closest to are also likely the ones who have been affected by our writing the most. If they’ve suffered for our craft, they’re going to want to make sure their suffering was not in vain. In all likelihood your friend will also know how much this novel writing business meant to you to start off with and they’ll encourage you to continue.

3. Think About the Repercussions:

Finally, perhaps the most powerful thing that you can do to drive yourself back to the keyboard is to imagine the repercussions of quitting. For some, the hardest part of quitting might be letting all the people you told you were writing a novel know that you didn’t finish. For others, it might be letting yourself down that tugs at your guilty heart strings.

For me, quitting would have meant that I’d have to honour the ‘Onerosity’ coupons from the Novel-Writing Kit that I gave out. ‘Onerosity’ coupons are a bit like I.O.Us, but they serve as punishment rather than repayment. For example, one of my ‘Onerostiy” coupons stated that if I didn’t reach 30,000 words by the end of this weekend, I would clean out my partner’s car (and let me tell you, cleaning out a car when it’s -25 degrees Celsius outside is something you definitely want to avoid). When I thought about quitting today, these coupons came back to haunt me. Would I rather spend the weekend cleaning the car or writing? Easy choice!

When Quitting is the Right Decision:

Despite my choice to continue on, I do think there are instances where quitting NaNoWriMo makes sense. Maybe you over-estimated the amount of free time you would have this month or something crazy happened in your life that’s just not going to make cranking out 50,000 words possible this time around. Lots of people do not finish NaNoWriMo (82%, in fact), so it’s certainly not for everyone.

I believe that you’ll know when quitting is the right choice for you.

Have you ever quit NaNoWriMo, or another writing project? What finally put you over the edge? What tactics have you used to keep yourself from quitting a writing project?

P.S. The picture above is of the “I Quit” envelope included the No Plot? No Problem! Novel-Writing Kit I mentioned a few weeks ago. The handbook in the kit states that envelope is to be used if: “you are on the verge of throwing yourself (or your manuscript) off  a bridge.” I can’t say I was contemplating such drastic actions, but I was definitely thinking about taking the pressure off of myself  by quitting this whole NaNo craziness. I was also desperate to know what was in there. Soooo I opened it.

I won’t give away what’s written on the little piece of paper in the envelope, but I can tell you that I was surprised at how effective it was at getting me back to the keyboard (how’s that for suspense!).