The pros and cons of NaNoWroMo – Should you do it?

It’s November, so its time to talk about NaNoWriMo, right? No. Not necessarily.

While its true that we all end up talking a lot about NaNoWriMo during November, some of us also end up participating it.

And even more, some of us even end up winning the race, right?

Right!

But it is not at all easy. And it is not at all necessary to be so addicted about the rules.

As I’ve discussed earlier in a couple of videos, NaNoWriMo is all about writing.

It doesn’t matter whether you are writing a novel or not, whether you write 50000 words in a month or not, whether you start on November 1st or not.

Watch these two videos to understand what I mean and also to get killer tips to get the writing going if you are a PANTSER writer/blogger.

Have you watched the videos? Right, now let me share some of the pros and cons of NaNoWriMo that you need to know!

The pros of NaNoWriMo

The spirit

When you are into writing – a writing that’s THIS serious, you need a lot of spirit.

You need a lot of motivation, commitment, accountability and what not!

So while it is so true that you can do writing all year round, taking up writing with a spirit when the NaNoWriMo spirit is highly prevalent is a brilliant idea.

When thousands of writers, all around the world, are taking up on this writing spree, it is only wise that you take it up as well!

Because you get a lot of emotional and moral support.

You see how people try, how they fail, how they manage to get their word count goal every day and so on.

You can follow the #NaNoWriMo hashtag on Twitter to see those realistic struggles 🙂

And when you see people doing it amidst all the odds, it is highly motivating.

Also, when you see how the struggle is real when people talk about their owns struggles, it is really soothing!

NaNoWriMo gets you into a habit

Writing every day for 30 days straight is HUGE.

30 days is a wonderful length of time for you to get into the habit of writing.

It doesn’t matter, really, if you manage to write 1667 words a day according to the NaNoWriMo rule.

If you manage to get some writing everyday, that’s a GREAT thing.

I personally write every day. And I got this idea or inspiration to write daily from the NaNoWriMo a few years ago.

And I share the WORKING tips on how to write every day here in this video:

With NaNoWriMo, you get into the habit of writing everyday.

Once you are done with the NaNoWriMo, it will be much easier for you to continue to write everyday even if it is not 1667 words a day!

Writing every day is very important if you are having a blog – you might know this already.

Your writing speed will be improved

With NaNoWriMo, you write with a goal every day.

And when you strive to hit that goal every day, you need to definitely write faster than usual.

If you are into NaNoWriMo, you definitely track your word count and compare it with your word count goal (or the NaNoWriMo goal).

In that case it is like you are running a race.

You wake up everyday with a set word count and you write to hit that goal.

Even though it doesn’t matter whether you have hit that goal or not, you would have written pretty faster than usual in an attempt to hit that goal.

And even when the NaNoWriMo thing is over, you will find that your writing speed has improved substantially.

More words or content written

It is not about the 50000 word count goal of NaNoWriMo.

Whether you hit that goal or not, you would clearly see that you have put a lot of words down when you do NaNoWriMo.

Just look at how many words you have written when you have taken up on NaNoWriMo – and compare it with your previous months word count, when you have not associated yourself with NaNoWriMo.

I bet it is definitely a lot more than your usual!

A great sense of accomplishment and satisfaction

With so much of writing done than usual, it is quite normal to feel good.

Whether you win NaNoWriMo or not, you would have made a lot of progress in terms of writing.

That will surely give you a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.

Be it a novel draft, content for your e-book, or e-course, content for your blog – whatever, the words you have accomplished because of the NaNoWriMo drive are worth feeling satisfied for!

Right, now on to some cons.

The cons of NaNoWriMo

It is not easy to write that much

1667 words a day or 50000 words in a month is not an easy goal.

Considering that you have your regular day-to-day activities to take care of, NaNoWriMo makes it really hard to keep up.

It doesn’t take a mere “showing up every day” and writing, but even more than that.

Hitting that word count takes a lot of sacrifice, discipline and hard work

NaNoWriMo can disrupt your other projects

It is reasonable to accept the fact that NaNoWriMo takes a lot of time.

And if you are already working on or in the middle of another project, NaNoWriMo will definitely disrupt that.

It is nearly impossible to continue doing all of what you would do on a daily basis and still get on with the NaNoWriMo goal.

So that means you have to give up on other stuff.

But I have a workaround for this. Since I don’t personally use NaNoWriMo for writing a novel, whatever I write (your other projects) goes into the word count of NaNoWriMo – except those emails 🙂

You can feel a lot of pressure

Yes when you have a word count to hit on a daily basis, you need to make a lot of adjustments to your routine.

A lot of your day today activities could get hit

Yet, you have that number to reach. You need to write with a lot of speed than the usual.

The rules, the goals, the target and the reality put you in a lot of pressure.

However, I personally take this pressure as a good thing.

When I am in pressure I get a lot done – so some pressure is good for you.

Just make sure you don’t take NaNoWriMo way too seriously so it pressurizes to the point of rising your BP or giving you a heart attack lol.

But jokes apart, seriously, you can bend the rules – all that it matters is you write.

I hate the winning/losing idea

If there is one thing I hate about NaNoWriMo, it is the idea of winning or losing.

When every one is giving their best to hit that word count, I see that as winning and it doesn’t matter if a person hit that word count or not.

But rather, by giving a strict win/lose rule, I see that intimidating. It can disappoint people who don’t hit that word count yet, tried so hard to.

Personally it doesn’t matter to me whether a person wrote 50000 words or 30000 or 10000 words for NaNoWriMo they win.

Also it doesn’t matter if they could only put a big fat goose egg on their word count tracker for a few days during this period.

As long as the struggle is real, every body wins.

So what are your thoughts about this? Agree or disagree with me? Let me know!