Ten Tips for Getting Through NaNoWriMo without Losing Your Mind (Part V)

4. When things go wrong, there’s always the weekend. Weekends—especially Saturday mornings—can be great times to spend playing catch-up. Let’s say it’s Saturday of a week where you couldn’t fit in time to write on either Tuesday or Friday. You’re now 3,334 words short, plus you still need Saturday’s 1,667 words for a grand total of 5,001 words needed to be churned out. Intimidating, right? Here’s where a lot of people give up entirely. Instead of throwing in the towel, look at this massive catch-up time as an opportunity to really delve deep into one of your characters’ psyches. Throw in a flashback sequence that explains something intrinsic about their present-day motivations. And remember that, yes, it may take you an hour to do each thousand-word chunk, but if you planned this adequately, you can grind this out during a time block that may only be otherwise used to sleep in. By the time you start craving lunch, you should be already done and feel very accomplished that you got back on that horse.