NaNoWriMo Writing Tip #1 - Save the Editing for December

I’ve been to three NaNoWriMo write-ins now, and every seasoned novelist attending has told me the same thing: “Turn off your inner editor and save the revising for December.” According to their gospel of wisdom, if you have any intention on hitting your 50,000 word goal, you have to stop revising and remind yourself that it’s okay to wait one month to go back before you fix every little imperfection.

Me? I’m a blogger. Most of what I’ve written online is published very quickly and in essay format, which means I often have time to go back and revise what I’ve written several times over.

Getting through the process of writing a novel during NaNoWriMo is not the same. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to tell your motherfucking story, then go back and edit only after you’ve spilled the beans on it all. This new process, this new routine of turning off my obsessive editor – it’s so different from what I’m used to. But it’s amazing how easy it’s been for me to pick up, and how refreshing it is knowing I don’t have to go back and dwell on every irritating error or poorly written sentence.

… Although I want to.
I really, really want to.

In Patrick Rothfuss’ recent pep talk, he says it’s okay to break the NaNoWriMo rule of zero revising. He argues that sometimes, the best ideas come from those little revisions we make as we go along, so we shouldn’t strictly adhere to the no-revision-rule because we might be robbing ourselves of amazing ideas and missing out on potential opportunities for awesome plot twists we would not have discovered otherwise.

I agree with that, but of course, I also lend credibility to my first suggestion: that editing constantly sometimes holds us back from finishing stories we wouldn’t normally complete when faced with fears of our own imperfection.

So, okay.
If your goal is to “win” NaNoWriMo and get to the 50,000 word count, turn off that inner editor and charge ahead. But in the end, it’s all about the story we tell anyway, isn’t it? It’s about the process of learning what it is to write a novel, and what it is to immerse ourselves as professional authors already do day in and day out, and being able to develop a routine that sets us on the path to achieving our writing goals.

Good luck!