Hooray, it’s November! People all around the world will be working on writing a manuscript first draft for NaNoWriMo. Last month the Fictorians featured working on pre-writing, plotting, and other methods of preparing to crank out a novel. Now it’s time to put those ideas into action.

This month we will feature ideas to help you:

• Avoid or overcome writer’s block.
• Stay motivated.
• Hit your goals.
• Be productive.
• Avoid burnout.
• Add in twists to stir up your plot.
• Find alternate methods to write, such as using dictation software.

I’ve hit the 50K mark every year since 2007. My best year was over 300K words in a month, and last year I hit 50K in three days — this time while using dictation software. Overall, I have over a million words written exclusively during NaNoWriMo.

I always plan out my works in advance, and I set up multiple projects. If I hit a roadblock on one, I can easily switch over to another one until I figure out what the issue is in the first. I’m looking forward to giving updates during NaNoWriMo, and I’m certain you’ll find our upcoming posts timely and useful.

With that said, here are my (admittedly insane) goals for the month of November:

• Write 500 articles, each of which is around 300 words. That’s 150,000 words, and I will be writing around 17-20 per day. No pre-writing.
• Write papers for my three graduate classes, plus post on the discussion boards. Not sure what is due during November yet.
• I will spew out a rough draft for at least one novel @ 50K words, minimum, to keep my NaNo streak going.
• Whatever short story invites fall from the sky.

Ready, steady…WRITE!