NaNoWriMo -- Your (Marginally Helpful) Week-by-Week Guide

There are a lot of great resources out there if you're planning to join the #NaNoWriMo2016 crowd. There's the official National Novel Writing Month website, itself, Buzzfeed has some helpful gif-inspired tips, and even Bustle has a series of helpful articles, including one on best-selling books that started off as Nano novels.

If you're looking for helpful hints, tips, tricks...this isn't the post for you. If you're looking for a bit of humor and some tongue-in-cheek advice/strategies...read on!

NaNoWriMo Day 1:
There is a reason NaNoWriMo starts on November 1. Last night was Halloween. If you or your kids celebrated in any way, chances are there's a lot of candy floating around your house. Obviously, you need extra energy for all of the writing you're going to be doing, so it's important to pick your favorites from the stash and hide them away. If you could pick a few extra Reese's for me, please, that would be fab. (My kid got tons of Haribo and ZERO chocolate last night, which is a travesty, yes?)

NaNoWriMo Day 7:

Every writer has that friend who writes insanely fast and "wins" NaNoWriMo in the first week. If you're like me, you need to unfriend and/or mute this person if you haven't already. Only for the month -- I'm not advocating severing friendships over this. BUT it's super discouraging to be barely eking out your 1,1666 words per day and have a friend declare "done". I don't know the person who wrote this text, but I feel like maybe they could be my best friend.

NaNoWriMo Day 15:

By now, you're deep in the trenches -- wondering if you should have plotted more, cursing your inner editor, missing television. You're halfway there and doing the math on how to squeeze in your remaining words. If you're on schedule, you've got 25K to go. If not, I'd recommend doing the math with a glass in hand. Preferably filled with your favorite adult beverage.

NaNoWriMo Day 23:

You've got one week left. Hooray! Oh, God! Bloody hell! And, hate to break it to you, but if you celebrate Thanksgiving, that's in there, too. Obviously the only thing that will provide the proper encouragement is a Ryan Gosling meme. Failing that, a week is still plenty of time, and NaNo does provide the perfect excuse to bail on those Turkey Day dishes!

NaNoWriMo Day 30:

The End. Well, the official end, anyway. Maybe you made 50K, maybe you didn't. Either way, you focused on your craft and your writing for a month, putting in 30 days of effort at the expense of lots of other things you could be doing. That looks like winning to me. Now, go pat yourself on the back and have a celebratory drink/ice cream/burger. You've earned it!