I've done it 5 times in the last 6 years and dragged my sorry carcass across the finish line all 5 times.
Here's some unsolicited advice:
- Go in with a good idea of a synopsis/outline. When you carve out the daily time to write, make sure you know what you're writing about. And don't be afraid to go off on tangents and explore other ideas. But, it always helps to sit down and have a direction to write in.
- Set a goal of pounding out 1800 words a day, a bit more than what is required (1667 words a day). Why? It always feels better to be ahead. Not to mention, there will be days when you won't get any writing done, so you need to build up enough of an advance to stop feeling guilty about not writing.
- Use a spreadsheet with 30 days worth of word counts to track my daily progress.
- Carve out some time, whether it's late at night or early in the morning, or over lunch.
- Get your family/significant others' buy in. Tell them what you're trying to do. I really does help to tell them your word count goal as they can encourage you. Or at least give them a timeframe for when you'll join them for dinner or come to bed!
- Maintain some social presence. You can't bury yourself in your novel. Getting out occasionally will help and might even help if you chat a bit about your work in progress.
Let me know if you have any questions...
You can buddy me over on the NaNoWriMo author page at http://nanowrimo.org/participants/jshayer
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