A slow week here at LAS, as out of blog activities have eaten up some of our creative power. (One such activity will result in BIG news soon! So stayed tuned.) I, for one, have been busy scrambling to manage the ~1,600 words a day needed to beat NaNoWriMo, where novelists around the world drive themselves crazy trying to write 50,00 words in a single story… in one month.

As I’ve written, I’ve thought of strategies to stretch my word count faster than usual. (I’m by far the slowest working member of LAS, taking about a year to finish a novel length manuscript.) Below are some ideas I’ve come up with, though it should be said that padding for a word count is not usually the best idea. Some stories are meant to be novellas while others are novels or short stories. However, in instances like NaNoWriMo where word count is king, these are some helpful ways to hit your 1,600 word a day quota without sacrificing quality.

Intertwining storylines.

Stuck on where your character’s gonna go from here? Want to take a break but still somehow be productive? Try telling two intertwining stories. Perhaps you intersperse flashbacks or flashforwards (which is what I’m doing) or perhaps you’re writing parallel plotlines, happening at the same time in different places. When you run out of steam for the moment on one person’s story, jump to the other. It halves the chances of hitting a total roadblock!

Don’t rush it

Take your time! Make it a slow burner, gradually introducing your world, your concept, your characters, what have you. Don’t feel like you have to throw everything at a reader right away. Just give em a reason to keep going, perhaps hinting here and there at some future disturbance. Otherwise, try resisting the urge to hit the story’s high tension points too soon. Odds are, you may rush through your plot too soon and end up running out of plotline around word number twenty thousand.

Plan it out

I actually hate outlines, and have written about my disdain for them before. But, in striving to hit a certain word count quickly, outlining your story may not be a bad idea. It can help you stay on track and prevent hitting roadblocks outline-skeptics like myself hit all too often.

Go big or go home

It’s national novel writing month. Not novella writing month. Not short story writing month. Take a look at how “big” your story seems. As I said earlier, some ideas just aren’t big enough to be a novel. And that’s okay, but if you’re like me trying to make a novel in November, then you need a novel worthy idea. Does your story sound like a concept for The Twilight Zone? It’s probably too short. Go bigger, get bolder. You don’t have to finish the story for it to “count” in NaNoWriMo. It’s just a word count goal. So it’s much better to think of a story that’s too long than too short.

Use your resources

The website for NaNoWriMo has excellent tools and tips for meeting your word count each day, as well as inspiration for your writing endeavors. Even if you’re not participating, check it out and get motivated!

All right. Back to the googledoc… Three thousand words behind O.O