Tips and Tricks for Winning the Traditional 50,000 Words in November Challenge

TL;DR: Live more freely, write more freely.

1. Install the Newsfeed Eradicator plugin for Chrome: chromewebstore.google.com/detail/news-feed-eradicator. You will gain more time to write and post on the forums. Side effects may include paying less attention to political rage-bait, better emotional regulation, longer attention span, and saving money... but also acting more weird and out of the loop. I have said before that the developer, Jordan West, deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for creating this plugin. Even if you decide later it's not your style, it's worth experimenting with.
2. The Newsfeed Eradicator only works if you also uninstall the social media apps on your phone, too! That's the lack of distractions people doing the original challenge had.
3. Banish the part of you that cringes, not the part that is cringe. The goal isn't publication; it's losing all the filters to tap into your own subconsciousness and seeing what stories are living in there. As a great friend of mine in the punk community said, "if you can't play guitar, play it even louder!"
4. You don't need to tell everyone in your real life that you're doing this. Not everyone will be supportive—that was true in the 2000s, and it's still true now.
5. Put one word in front of the other.
6. Be consistent about writing every day... Unless you're the type of person who used to write your high school term papers in homeroom the day they were due because you knew that your style of prose plus your handwriting looked like it was from the Victorian era, and you suspected your teachers were bumping up your grades because of that... If that's you, then by all means, feel free to procrastinate. Then write for so many hours straight that it feels like a K-hole, and then brag in the forums about how amazing that was.
7. The book "No Plot? No Problem!" is still out there and contains Chris Baty's wisdom. It's less up-to-date and more conventional than the advice on this list and I absolutely recommend picking up a copy to supplement this list.
8. Lean into the "Rule of Funny." Write things in just because they're hilarious, not because they're what makes high-brow literature. The reason I recommend this is that laughter releases a lot of endorphins and dopamine. If you're feeling good from that, you're more likely to keep going than if you're not having fun.
9. Use the resources in the forums. Anyone can write alone. The point of NoctuWriMo is to multiply your craziness by someone else's craziness multiple times over.
10. Write with conviction. The best feedback I've ever gotten to a NaNoWriMo project was "if nothing else, it has conviction," and "you had enough to say that you filled a whole book—not everyone is thinking that much."
11. "Write while drunk, edit while sober" —Millennials who thought they were quoting Ernest Hemingway on the original NaNoWriMo forums (lean into the spirit of that, not necessarily the most literal interpretation).
12. On the editing note: don't expect to show up at writing groups that actually take themselves seriously and have them think your NoctuWriMo manuscript is worth editing. My experience with my 2010 NaNoWriMo manuscript was that when I shared it with online friends, I got feedback like "I read it all in one sitting" but when I shared it with serious professionals, there was nothing left to salvage after their critiques.
13. As IRL events take off, NoctuWriMo will hopefully become like NaNoWriMo was as far as worldwide events being a way to connect with people no matter where you go. Get out to events in more than one city if you can once IRL events start up! I used to travel to Canada just for the overnight NaNoWriMo event in Toronto!

What made NaNoWriMo in the 2000s unique was the friends people made along the way! It's all about having a community where we can laugh, cringe, and churn out rough drafts.