Nano: Tips and Tricks: Word Count

I have few favourite games to play with word count to keep me pounding the keys when I would otherwise give up.

Word Wars

First, try a word war alone or with a friend (or with strangers, there's word war threads in the Nanowrimo forums!)

Set a timer for 5, 10, 15 minutes and then go go go. Do not stop writing for that entire period of time, no matter how much you want to, or how ridiculous your story is getting. Keep going.

Then, do it again, and try to beat your first total!

Other than word wars, there are few tricks I play on myself to get my word count up there.

Word Count Games

I try to set a goal for the day - usually 1667, but trying whenever possible to stretch past that to an even number - so instead of 8335 on day five, I might aim for 8500. More words is always better!

In addition, when I sit down to write, I'll start with a length of time - something short, because I can write in sprints, but if I tell myself to write for an hour, my attention wanders. So, let's say... I'll write for 7 minutes. And then I look at my word count and I decide to write until I round up to the nearest 50 or 100 words. And then I'll look at my total words written for the day, and try to round that up to the nearest 50 or 100. 

And then I'll do another 7 minutes of writing, or I'll play back and forth at stretching to my next round number for total words written or total for the day, until I'm satisfied with my word count and can set Nano down for the day!

Beat a Buddy (in Word Count, This is Not Whack-a-Mole!)

Another popular word count booster is to find someone in your region, on your buddy list or in the forums in general who has a slightly higher word count than you, and race to beat that word count. This works best if they're also writing when you are (so with a friend, or someone posting actively in, e.g., the word war forum) as their word count will keep increasing and you'll 'have' to write to keep up.