October nanowrimo...

First of all, I wish you luck writing in October instead of November! I always seem to have trouble writing outside of the official month, even for the April and July Camp NaNo events.

The only tips I can think of are that during November, word wars have saved my writing. I've learned that to get enough words down per day, I have to force myself to dedicate even 15 minutes at a time to writing. But... I also get distracted really easily. So the only way I could make myself dedicate that time was by going to my region's facebook group and either joining or starting word wars every evening that I was home. Otherwise I would go to every write-in I could, because being out of the house seemed to help fight distractions.

Another thing is just to try to find something that can keep your interest all month. It's hard. Week two especially is evil. But if you tell yourself "I want to get through the rest of this jumbled mess to write THAT scene" it seems to go by a little easier, if that makes sense?

My first year of NaNo was my first year of college (2012). Not exactly the best idea, but I finally had a laptop so I wanted to try it. The first year I just barely made it to the 50,000 words right before midnight on the last day of the month. The second year (2013), I actually started going to regional events, which seemed to help me set aside writing time vs. homework time, and I think I made it to 50,000 the second to last day, but didn't really do any writing after that. 2014..... I might as well say I didn't even join. My grandma had died the month before, plus school was running my life, and I had trouble focusing on anything. I wrote about a paragraph on the first day, and never went back to it.

Last year was probably my best year yet though. I was technically rebelling because I was picking up a story I'd already started forever ago, but because I knew I had extra time (It was my first November out of school and at the time I was, unfortunately, working a job that hardly gave me any hours) I decided to push myself to get through an entire (oversized) book by the end of the month. I came really close. I ended with around 85,000 words, and about three chapters left to write (which I finished a couple months later)

I'm a little nervous for this year, but hoping for the best... Lots of craziness going on in my life that probably won't help anything.

I can understand that... I was a graphic design major, and we always seemed to have huge projects due in November since it was almost the end of the semester. I think the only way that I got through writing those first couple of years was to 1. See it as one of my many distractions from homework/rewards for getting an assignment done, and 2. I almost treated it like it was homework. My daily 1,667 words was just added to my list of assignments.

You don't have to be a good writer to get through NaNo. The idea is to just get something on the page. No backspace, and no editing (even though for me that's one of the harder parts...) But think of it this way: The more you write, the better of a writer you'll be.

Thanks!

It is really hard.... I usually cave and at least edit a few small things that catch my attention....
My first NaNo I had a story with a beginning, and a few things in the middle........ and I still haven't finished it because I don't know how it should end.

Mostly fantasy. The second NaNo I attempted a dystopian story, but I kind of lost track of where I was going with it. Last year I was working on a modern day fantasy that I'd started writing back in middle school.