NaNoWriMo is a great way to beat writer’s block
Lessons learned from NaNoWriMo: Part I
This is a guest post from Caitlin Fitzsimmons, a journalist, travel writer, blogger and wannabe fiction writer. Her site is caitlinfitzsimmons.com.
No matter how often we are told that the only way to get better at writing is practice and the first draft is allowed to suck, I think many beginning writers find it hard to turn off the internal editor. I certainly did and partly I blame that on my background in journalism. When I write an article, I edit as I go. The first step is perfecting the very first sentence, then the rest of the piece flows naturally from there. But if I try to apply this approach to creative writing, I never get beyond the first sentence of the first paragraph before I want to delete it and start again. So I never get anything written.
But with NaNoWriMo, word count is king. If you are writing 50,000 words in 30 days on top of your normal life and work, then you are bound to be writing some pretty awful prose. It’s quantity over quality. What’s the point, you may ask? If you tend to get paralysed by writer’s block like me, it’s a really great way to let go of those inhibitions and give yourself the freedom to just write. You can always edit it later.
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