5 Ways to Maintain Your NaNoWriMo Momentum

National Novel Writing Month is a fantastic opportunity to flex your writing muscles, try something new, and challenge yourself to achieve the absolute feat of drafting an entire novel in 30 days. This challenge can be fun and invigorating, but maintaining momentum for any challenge that lasts 30 days can be difficult.

Right around now, many of us who started the month bright-eyed and enthusiastic are starting to lose steam. This is when that first burst of inspiration and pool of ideas starts to run dry, and some people start to lose hope of reaching that 50,000 word goal and winning NaNoWriMo.

Never fear. You are not alone in this sudden haze of writer’s block. We all hit a wall at some point during the 30 day marathon that is NaNoWriMo, and I’m here to share with you some of the ways you can keep your momentum going and meet your goals!

1. Change Your Font to Comic Sans

I don’t know why this works, but it does.

Falling into the trap of editing your story in your head before writing the words down will slow anyone’s writing momentum. However, for some reason, if you are typing out your story in Comic Sans font, the words just…flow easier.

There’s something about this cartoonish joke font that tells your brain it’s alright to bang out a trashy, hot mess of first draft. Text written in Comic Sans is not meant to be taken seriously and that frees you from the inhibitions that might have otherwise slowed you down or tricked you into trying to edit while you draft.

The job of a first draft is to exist, so that you have something to revise and edit in the next stage of writing. NaNoWriMo is about writing a first draft. It doesn’t have to be good. It doesn’t have to make sense. You’ll deal with plot holes, continuity errors, clunky dialogue, and jarring transitions later. Right now your job is to produce a wild, fabulous mess of a first draft.

And there is no better font for fabulous messes than Comic Sans.

2. Try A Sprint!

There is something weirdly motivating about squaring off against other writers in a short, timed write to see how much you can produce before the clock runs out. Sometimes you just need that little competitive edge to drive you to write even when you’re not sure where the story is going.

You can find the official NaNoWriMo sprint account here: https://twitter.com/nanowordsprints

In addition to the official NaNoWriMo sprints, local groups sometimes host Discord servers with a bot that runs sprints on demand. These servers are also a great place to meet and chat with other writers who are working on their own NaNo projects. Sharing ideas and getting encouragement from other local writers is another boost to help you maintain momentum.

3. Do the Non-Writing Part of the Writing

Staring at the screen with nothing coming out can be daunting and discouraging, so don’t do it.

If you find yourself good and stuck, devoid of ideas, or just not feeling it today, move on to something else. Get up and go for a walk, create a playlist for your main character, or curate a soundtrack for your whole story. Look up reference material, or check out prompts that have been posted on the official NaNoWriMo site. Move away from being stuck and give your creative juices time to build up again.

You can also go back and read what you’ve already written. Revisiting things you already have completed can spark ideas for where to go next. Maybe you left a gap earlier that needs a transition, and you have a better idea of what to put there now. Perhaps there was something mentioned early in the story that you’ve forgotten about, and now you can add it back in.

There are many aspects to writing that don’t necessarily involve writing. When you find yourself stuck, it can be helpful to explore other parts of the process until you are ready to come back and continue adding to your word count.

4. Are You Writing Your Story in Order? Try Not Doing That

Watching your story grow and progress from beginning to end can be so satisfying, but if you’re stuck on a particular transition, or not feeling up to writing the next scene in the sequence, you can skip around. There is no rule that says you have to write chronologically.

Is there a scene happening later in the story that you know for sure will happen, already like, or are excited to work on? Why wait? Write it now. You can always go back to where you left off and keep going in order when you’re ready.

Any progress on your story is good progress. Growing your manuscript in clumps and spurts will get you to your goal just the same as going in one continuous line.

5. Embrace the Fluff

There are scenes that will never make it into a final draft. You should write them anyway.

You might be stuck with your overall plot, but are there small moments between characters, side quests, or nonsensical encounters that you’re not writing because they’ll inevitably be cut?

Write them anyway.

Try setting your characters down in a pub or a café. Send them to the county fair, or the movies, or on a hike. Let your characters spend downtime together, chat, play together, or have arguments that do nothing to serve the plot.

Take a moment to describe your landscape. Maybe there’s a sudden change in the weather, and your characters take time to watch storm clouds drift over the plains, dragging curtains of rain behind them. Maybe your adventuring party wakes up to a fresh snowfall, and postpone their journey to have a snowball fight.

Are there folktales, histories, or legends that one of your characters could tell to another? Write the scene where they tell that story!

Not only do these scenes contribute to your overall word count for the month, they help you develop your world and your characters in ways that may shake loose whatever has you stuck on the main plot line. Getting to know your characters, and letting them grow and bloom in your mind goes a long way to helping you continue to write and fill the quiet between story beats.

This is a first draft, things will be cut, don’t leave scenes out of your first draft just because they’ll be removed when you revise. It’s harder to lose momentum when you’re having fun, and fluff scenes are fun to write.

Good luck with your NaNoWriMo journey, and Happy Writing!