If you are anything like hundreds of thousands of people out there on the Internet right now, you are getting ready to participate in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).
Like those people, you might be biting your nails a little bit at the prospect of having to write 50,000 words in thirty days, especially if you’ve never done it before. Just like you, writers and writers-to-be are out there organizing their sticky notes, rearranging their workspaces, doing all the chores they should do during the month in advance, or maybe just panicking.
That’s because writing 50,000 words is no small thing.
At midnight on the last night of October, as it ticks over into the month of November, many will begin their NaNoWriMo journey immediately. Right on the dot at midnight. Others will wait until morning to start their coffee-powered dive into their brand new story.
Some will squeeze out every syllable of their word count in a single day. Others will write the advised minimum of 1,667 words each day for thirty days to create a steady, stable, strong habit to reach their goal.
What if I told you there was another way?
A way that would surpass your wildest dreams of success. A way to create a full novel in a single month or even less. Do you want to know what it is?
The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. It has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth: that you are a writer, Neo, trapped in a prison for your mind. Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. This is your last chance. You take the blue pill, and you wake up tomorrow with plans to complete NaNoWriMo as they suggest, with the bare minimum word count every day for thirty days. You take the red pill, and you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Yes, the Matrix came out twenty years ago. I understand that. That’s not the point.
Take the red pill…
What I’m trying to tell you is that there’s another way than just doing the bare minimum word count every day to get this thing done. And, in the process, you can prove to yourself that you are capable of way more than you think you are.
Back in 2010 on the forums of NaNoWriMo, a user named @txteclipse with the help of another user named @an-chan posted a rubric outlining how someone could—theoretically, mathematically—write the most words on Day One of November and the least words on Day Thirty to reach the goal of 50,000 words. In fact, they crunched those numbers so hard, a writer only had to write one word to achieve the goal.
A sweet reward for a big risk. That’s why they originally called it the reward method. You’d be rewarding yourself by having to write only a single word on the last day of the month.
Since then, others have reworked it and renamed it things like the reverse system, the backwards NaNo, and—my personal favorite—the downhill method.
The Downhill Method
Seems fairly straightforward, right?
Now, I’m going to say this as someone who has participated in NaNoWriMo twelve times and won nine times out of those twelve. When I discovered this reward-reverse-backwards-downhill witchcraft, I was pretty skeptical. Writing over 3,000 words on the first day seems like a tall order. But I decided to give it a shot.
And boy, am I glad I did!
The Results
I had spent all of October hyping myself up about this story that I was going to write even if I didn’t have it 100 percent outlined or sure of what was going to happen. I found that I was so excited on Day One that those words came easily! I just blocked off a bunch of time spread out throughout my day and slammed that keyboard until I had at least 3,346 words.
Here’s the thing, though: I was so hyped that I just kept going. I couldn’t stop! The elation of surpassing my first daily goal on a brand-spankin’-new story completely swept me away!
I wrote close to 5,000 words that first day, which means—if you’re still doing the math at home—that my goal shrank even more for the rest of the days to follow.
Day Two was similar. I was pumped, I was ready, I was primed. I wrote far beyond the daily recommended target for Day Two, still high off of the success of Day One. Even with the downhill grid firmly in place, the same was true of Day Three. And Day Four. And so on.
Y’all, I finished my 50,000 words on Day Fourteen of NaNoWriMo that year.
And all because of this crazy backwards number system that convinced me I was a god and incapable of failing. It was amazing. I cannot even explain to you how pumped I was to write every day because I had already surpassed my own expectations for myself.
Will you give it a go this year?
The method sounds like a lot more work than hitting the minimum daily word count at first, but if you really psych yourself up for it on or before Day One, you will seriously blow yourself away.
If regular NaNo guidelines are like hopping off the diving board into the deep end, this was like skydiving out of an airplane. Bigger rush, faster completion time, and a massive amount of personal achievement and satisfaction.
What do you think? Have you done this before, or have I convinced you to strap on a crash helmet and really go for it this year? Let us know in the comments below!
Welcome to the other side of the Matrix, friends.
Good luck!
Alyson Grauer is an actor, an author, a podcaster, a tabletop roleplayer, a traveler, a dialect coach, and a voice actor. She is really into writing sci-fi, speculative fiction, and fantasy in particular. Currently based out of Orlando, Alyson spent over a decade in Chicago and is originally from Milwaukee. Her novel On the Isle of Sound and Wonder can be purchased through Amazon. You can find Alyson on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Patreon, and her website.
