December... WHAAAA...?

Wait... December? ALREADY? BUT MY NOVEL'S NOT DONE YET! I BARELY WROTE 300 WORDS YESTERDAY! GAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!
Commence other forms of "post-NaNo confusion" and "post-NaNo blues" and other things that go along with NaNoWriMo being over.
It's actually surprising that I kind of miss it. A lot of the time, I was ambivalent about the plot of my novel. I I still enjoyed it, but maybe the first year's a lot more fun than the second year. Maybe the fun was sucked out of it the second year by AB calculus and over-plotting. Well, next year, wherever I am, I'll hopefully not be taking calculus, and I'll have a lot more free time to write. Probably.
Anyway, whatever my situation is next year, I'll hopefully know what NOT to do.
Actually, I'm going to make a list here and now. (Hey! Blog Title Reference! WIN!)

What To Do To Win NaNoWriMo And Enjoy It:
1. Have a basic set of characters
2. Allow room for adding people in
3. Have a goal for your characters (a plot, basically. Nothing too elaborate, though)
4. Do your research, if you need it.
5. Allow yourself to sleep.
6. If you find yourself freaking out, get some sleep.
7. Find friends to hold you accountable (if any of you have been to my Facebook page, you'll notice I have three friends in this with me)
8. If you want to write by hand, find a Magic Pen, a Magic Notebook, a Magic Place To Write, and a Magic Block of Time in which to write. If you're typing, find a USB/ thumb drive, a Magic Corner in which to write, and a Magic Block of Time to write in.
9. If you're an overachiever, be a consistent overachiever.
10. Allow yourself room for word-count-missing. But not too much room.

What To Avoid During NaNo:
1. Over-plotting
2. Controlling the story
3. Absolutely no goal
4. Let yourself get bogged by research
5. Coffee, if you're like me and it caffeinates your Inner Editor
6. Avoid your Inner Editor, period
7. Not doing homework
8. Thinking you have a dumb idea. (just like there are no stupid questions, there are no stupid ideas, only people who think so. Who needs them?)
9. Avoid pulling all-nighters.
10. Avoid randomly finding time to write. Like, if you're only getting in half an hour in the morning and twenty minutes in the evening, you're going to get a horrid word count. But if you get to your Daily Necessary Destination (class, work, school, etc) early, then you can leave when necessary, do all your Post-Necessary-Destination work right when you get home, and then write your sorry little fingers off. Or wrists, if you're hand-writing.

So those are my lists. I hope you like them. I expect ALL of you to do NaNoWriMo next year. If you're like my dad and don't think you have a novel inside you, write 50,000 words about you protesting to an annoying teenager that you're NOT GOING TO WRITE A NOVEL.

10 Counter-Arguments/ ways to get over the excuse that "I Don't Have A Creative Story To Tell/ I Don't Have A Novel In Me/ etc":

1. if you don't have a creative story to tell, tell an un-creative one.
2. If you don't have a novel in you, that means it's outside of you. Track it down and write it next November. It's hiding because it doesn't like your innards very much, and because your anti-novel-writing is scary to your poor story.
3. If you're worried about quality, swear to yourself that you won't let anyone see it after you're done with the book.
4. If you're strapped for ideas, look for drama (DO NOT CREATE DRAMA) at your workplace. Listen to conversations in the lunchroom and then tie them into your novel.
5. Also on the topic of work: if you don't think you can think up something, write about yourself going to work and writing a paper. Have the paper change the world.
6. If you don't think you have a 50,000 word novel in your guts (or hiding outside your guts), then there are ways to manipulate your wording so you can pad your word count. For example, ban apostrophes from your novel (the punctuation, not the lit device). Instead of saying "don't," say "do not." Instead of saying "KnitterWriterBlogger's List," say "the List that KnitterWriterBlogger wrote." Additionally, you could say "the List that Knitter Writer Blogger wrote," and making "Knitter Writer Blogger" three words instead of one.
7. If you don't think you have a read-able novel, tell yourself you're going to stash it under your bed and never look at it again.
8. If you just plain don't want to write a novel, no matter the topic or the time frame or the number of words it takes, write about how you don't want to write a novel.
9. If you don't think your life is cool enough for a novel, I refer again to the work-place scenario. You can write about something to do with your job. If your job is really complex, go into great depth to explain how the complexities work. If you really need a PhD to understand what you're talking about, then forget the explanations early on and have the plot revolve around how a novice (who doesn't have a PhD) comes into the field, and they figure out something about it, and then the villain reveals something in the Dastardly Plot that completely baffles the hero and leads to the eventual demise of one of them. Who said it had to be a comedy?
10. Write the bloody novel anyway, no matter what you want/ don't want/ think/ don't think/ wish you could/ should be doing. Just have a massive word barf/ word war/ word explosion, and then stash it under your bed and never look at it again. When you're famous for something that's "more important" than writing a novel, your biographers will come poking around your house and find a novel under your bed and add "noveling" to the list of your many merits. HAHAHAHA!

Just don't let yourself think you CAN'T do something, because will mean you can't. And that will really suck. Who wants to be incapable of doing stuff because they doubt themselves?