30 Days of Encouragement for NaNoWriMo (and other writers, too!)

Right about now, you may be starting to feel it.  It starts as a tickle at the back of your mind, then perhaps a twitch in your left eye.  You get up for a cup of tea and find that the feeling isn’t going away.   I wonder if that’s the exact name I gave the coffee shop in the first chapter?  Does Ralph limp on his left side or his right?

Your hand moves to the mouse to click back a few pages, just to be sure…  Don’t do it!

This is not the time to edit things you wrote two days ago.  Actually, the time to edit won’t even be on December 1st.  Going back to “fix” everything you just did will only keep you on a writing hamster wheel — putting in a lot of effort, but not getting anywhere.   Today, try to resist the urge to repair and check up on details or plot lines you established at the start of the week.

If your story is going completely off the rails, you can gently nudge it back on course or choose to follow one of the wacky tangents that have come up without going backwards and retrofitting.   If you end up in a different place than you started, you can always edit the start of your novel to fit the new plot… later.  Much, much later.

At this point, trying to correct as you go along is just another form of procrastination.  Let the desire for perfection go and keep plugging away at the task ahead.  Onward!