It’s November 1st and that means National Novel Writing Month begins today. If you have already signed up, awesome! Now quit procrastinating and go write.

For everyone else, it’s not too late. Challenge yourself mentally. Let that story you have locked away in your imagination out into the wild. I started almost a week late last time, but still managed to get out 50,311 words. Some things I’ve learned from past years that may help.

Write more. Sounds trite and simple, but what I mean is, if your goal is to write 1,666 words a day to meet the goal, don’t stop simply because you’ve met your target on a given day. There will be occasions where things happen and you just don’t have the time to write. The pressure of feeling behind the eight ball can stifle the creative juices and having a buffer will alleviate that stress.

Write often. If you can schedule a block of time each day to devote to writing, that’s great! I can’t. I usually have a couple of hours at night, but weekends are totally unpredictable, so I write wherever I can, whenever I have a few free minutes. I use a PC at home, but keep my tablet on me at all other times and use a writing app that syncs between the two.

If you get stuck, skip to the next part. You don’t have to write a story in the order it will be read. You can write the sections you have already seen in your mind, and then stitch them together later. If you are point D and want to get to G, but don’t yet know the steps in between, that’s okay, just move ahead and you can come back to fill in the gaps when inspiration strikes later on.

The most important part is to try. I’ve attempted the challenge five times now and only succeeded twice. You know what? Nothing bad happened to me when I failed and I learned a lot. You have nothing to loose and everything to gain by making the attempt