Okay, this is where I know I will struggle... I like to write one day and edit the next, but it's a much slower process and means I'm more likely to procrastinate. I imagine one of the beauties of Novel November (and previously NaNoWriMo) was getting the first draft completed, which is a weight off for any writer. This is my first time. I've been told I'm a perfectionist, and I'm going to have to leave that behind if I want to make it through the month! So, on that note, does anyone have any advice on writing sprints for someone who has never done one? Really, any advice is gratefully received.

You don't have to leave perfection behind entirely... just postpone it until December 😂 The 50K challlenge definitely helped me get into the mindset of writing at novel scale. I previously only wrote short stories, so the emphasis was on being succinct and exact, and cutting out anything that wasn't absolutely vital to the core idea. But with novels, I guess I had to learn to meander, give myself permission to explore deeper than I was useful. I realise I haven't actually answered the wordsprint question at all. Um... I like to break the target down into blocks of a hundred words. Can I write 600 words in an hour? I dunno, that sounds hard. Can I write 100 words in 10 minutes? Probably, that seems easier. What about 10 words in the next minute? Easy! So long as I don't get distracted!

My CoAuthor for the Quirni Series on Kindle is like you PurpleCordelia. She tries to have everything planned out and perfect before pen gets to paper. My suggestion is to think about scenes you want to write and see if writing them out of order helps keep you motivated. For instance, instead of writing the last chapter last, if that's the thing you have a scene in your head for, write it first, then fill in the major plot point that had to happen before that, and the major plot point before that, and before that. This helps sometimes because you already know the foreshadowing you need to add because you've already got your ending. Also this keeps you writing because you're eager to describe and show the previous scenes or the scenes that build up or come from the scene you were writing. It may keep the passion up and the writing flowing versus feeling like you need to go back and edit every other day. Alternately, consider your editing part of a goal wordcount. If you've added 400 words to a chapter because you filled in the scene and flushed out character monologues, that's still 400 words you've added to the story. If you set yourself a goal to review 25,000 words of the story by the end of November, along with your goal to write 50,000, then you're going above and beyond the expectations. One year I hit a plot hole I only realized after getting an extra 4,000 words into it and had to scrap that and continue writing from the midpoint again, but I feel I can still count that 4,000 because I wrote it intending it to go into the story, it just didn't end up in the final draft. I've not seen it be a 50,000 word publishable book, it's just a goal to write every day with an end goal in mind, and collectively that end goal is 50k.

Thank you Bethany! I really appreciate your thoughts on that. I also predominantly write short stories. I was working on one novel for a couple of years, but I woukd focus on each chapter like a short story, so my method was slightly different. It was dystopian, so actually I've plotted out something new for my current novel, as the state of the world was really crushing my enthusiasm for writing dystopia. I will do my best not to edit too much until December! 😅 Short sprints alao sounds like a better way to break it down, so I like that idea. 👍 Aleydreamer, thank you for your thoughts too! I do actually often write last chapters last, or chapters with a lot going on (othetwise I get bored). Rather than it being an issue of order, whatever I *do* end up writing, I think go over and over too many times before moving on to whatever I'm writing next. It does make me slower than I should be, I think. 🙈 Perhaps I just need to stop myself from reading over what I've written, because if I do I just won't stop trying to edit it! Haha.

You can already see I type too fast and make tonnes of typos, worse when it's plot or dialogue. 😂🙈

as a fanfiction author, I am writing chapter for chapter, as I publish them as soon as they are done, and my readers would complain if I wrote the last one first - even though, that might come out interesting, if I wrote a story backwards, perhaps I will look into it and do it one day ... :D ... however, I suggest just writing whatever is coming to your mind, Purple, and then use the December for editing, that's how I do it at least ... this way the most strange things happen, and one of my main characters ends up becoming a police officer, even though I wanted him to become a big boss of a chemistry concern, while another character suddenly marries, even though he isn't supposed to do that ... your characters get a life of their own if you allow it to just let the words and your imagination flow ... concerning your typos - everyone that finds some of mine, they may keep them, I don't want to have them back ... :D ... wish you fun for writing evil