three Ps on the page (no cleanup required)
This month is NaNoWriMo and writers all over the world are racing to write a 50k word novel in 30 days.
Are you one of them?
Some of the novels written during this month will be amazing. A few will eventually get published.
Water for Elephants.
The Night Circus.
Wool.
Anna and the French Kiss.
These are bestselling novels that started as NaNoWriMo projects.
Thousands of other novels written this month will be….
Disappeared into file folders deep in the C: drive.
Stuffed in a banker box at the back of the closet.
Hidden in the brain attic never to get onto a page.
Unfinished, forgotten, and forlorn.
(Any of these sound familiar to you?)
Finishing your NaNoWriMo novel is a wonderful feeling, but it’s not the most important thing.
I’m going to repeat that, finishing your NaNoWriMo is not the most important thing.
The most important thing you can do for your writing, during any month, is getting words on the page.
Lots and lots of words.
Silly words.
Ugly words.
Wrong words.
Perfect words.
Awkward words.
Brilliant words.
Words.
Words.
Words.
Is it great to finish a novel in 30 days? Yes. Of course it is.
But it’s not the ONLY reason.
The three Ps of getting words on the page:
Process.
The more you write the more you know HOW you write. You’re going to need to know your process so you can recreate it for the next pages and ultimately the next novel.
Persistence.
Showing up regularly and consistently to do the work builds momentum. You’re going to need momentum to get through writing a whole novel.
Pumped-Up.
It feels good to get words on the page. You want to feel good about writing so you'll want to keep showing up to do more of it. (See #2. Because you’re in this for the long haul, right?)
The more words you get on the page, I promise the easier it gets to find the words that work to tell the story you want to tell.
(And hey, if you didn’t already know, you can always go back later and change the ones that don’t work. 🤣🤣🤣)
Keep going.
Hello!
My name is Jocelyn.
Story warrior, book lover, day dreamer, gardener, and creative. I help serious writers roll up their sleeves, get their novel ready for publishing, and reach readers. When I’m not elbow-deep in the story trenches, I’m outside world-building in my garden and battling weeds with my three criminal mastermind cats.