Avoiding a NaNoWriMo Plateau

Photo by jeshoots on Unsplash

As of right now, the minute I’m writing this article, it is day seven of NaNoWriMo.

That, for me and you, is (hopefully) seven straight days of writing nearly 2,000 words.

I’ve managed to keep up with my writing every day so far, and maybe you have too, which we should always be proud of ourselves for.

But I have a question for you.

Have you hit a plateau in your writing?

I’m well aware that it’s hardly been a week, but I’ve gotten stuck more times than I’d care to admit, and I think some of you might have this issue as well.

So how can we avoid this problem? How can we push through our absolute worst days to continue to reach our goals?

Get It All Out There

If you’re a perfectionist, someone who has to continuously go back and change what you’ve written, then NaNoWriMo might be a bit of a struggle for you.

You’re going to have to change that.

If you’re stuck staring at a blank page and wondering how you’re supposed to write this many words this fast, then my first piece of advice is to get it all out there. Write anything that comes to mind. And I mean it. Literally anything.

Slap it onto the page. Type furiously as your character lets out a stream of consciousness that might not even make sense to you right now.

When you finish your NaNoWriMo, it’s not like it’ll immediately be published. People won’t be reading it on December first (probably), and you’ll have plenty of time to edit then.

So don’t worry about it now. At this moment, or in the future when you get stuck, just throw out anything and everything you can think of onto that page.

Look To Others For Help

I don’t mean asking your friends to tell you what to write, though I do find myself begging the people around me to write for me.

What I mean is look online for prompts. For sentence starters. For poems and excerpts from novels. Check every page on Google, Pinterest, your favorite blogs and websites, everywhere.