“If you give yourself too much time to plan, you may end up stumbling across a brilliant concept for your novel.”

There is a danger that you may get sidetracked by a brilliant idea. Yes, the last point is not a typo. Chris Baty found that some folks who started NaNoWriMo gave up without completing because “they’ve found a story they love and want to work on it slowly enough to do it justice”. When Chris checked up on these people six months later they’d inevitably stopped working on their book altogether.

The lesson here is don’t give up what you’ve committed to do. Starting NaNoWriMo is easy; staying through the course and completing your 50,000 word novel is hard. But when you’ve done it, you will achieve a sense of accomplishment and love of the writing craft. So, when you have that brilliant idea, make sure you write it down and come back to it after National Novel Writing Month is over. Better yet, try using the idea in your current noveling journey. It just may help you discover if your idea has legs.

Happy Day 13 of NaNoWriMo!

ThinkBLink by Shilpa Raikar.