Five Steps to a NaNoWriMo Win

So, I've developped a very simple way of breezing through NaNoWriMo, which works whether you are a planner or a pantser. You have to be willing to forget about your inner editor, but when you participate in November's frenzy, you don't have that choice anyway.

So, what are the five steps?

1. Sit down at your desk. Well, sit down anywhere comfortable and isolated. You don't want people talking to you.
2. Close the internet. This is very important, because it will greatly diminish the temptation to procrastinate. The harder it is to turn your net back on, the better.
3. Write for 20 minutes. Don't stop. Write what comes to mind, and don't go back to erase it. Just write write write, until the 20 minutes are finished. You can do 15 or 30 minutes sprints too. I work better with 20, but I know others will prefer different length.
4. Take a 5-10 minute break. Rest your wrists. Don't erase what you just wrote. Just rest, and think of what will come next.
5. Repeat 3 and 4 until you hit your goal. Depending on your speed, I have seen writers bash out from 400 to 1000 words in this lapse of time. I do around 750, and I'm not that fast a typist.

What does this mean? Within a hour, you can hit your daily 1667 words. Of course there will be distractions, and sometimes you'll take longer. But if you sit down for two hours a day and do this, you'll steadily advance toward your 50k goal.

This is also a lot funnier with friends. Maybe it's just me, but when others are typing with me, I feel guilty if I stop. So I keep going, and by the end of the sprint, I have a couple more hundreds to my word count.

There are hundreds of ways to finish NaNo. This is mine, and once I discovered what I could do with 15 minutes of writing, I began sneaking time everywhere I could. I never thought I had that much spare time.