I am writing this blog post with a huge grin on my face and my new favorite shirt en route to my house. Why? Because I won NaNoWriMo this year, baby!
And I have 4thewords to thank for it.
What is 4thewords?
4TW gets described as a gym membership for writers and as a writing-focused RPG. I’m happy to report that it’s a truly magical combination of the two.
After registering as a user and creating your avatar, you’re swept into an adorable-meets-epic fantasy story that serves to get you psyched to engage in your first monster battle. Yes, monster battle.
You see, in practice, 4TW works like this: driven by the main plot, one of hundreds of side quests, your burning desire to keep your streak, or your muse, you’ll challenge a cute monster from 4TW’s colorful world to conquer by writing a given number of words within the given timeframe.
For example, take the Wignow, the site’s unofficial mascot (at least in my mind). You’ll need to write 250 words in 30 minutes to defeat one of these sentient piles of leaves. Succeed, and you’re rewarded with resources, tokens to redeem for cool stuff, and—get this—250 more words than you had before you started!
Why 4thewords?
I first heard about 4TW through an old Rachael Stephen Preptober video. I’ll admit that the concept did not initially appeal to me. I didn’t think I’d be enticed by the costumes or furniture or whatever else was on offer. To be honest, even the most glowing descriptions still sounded like a recipe for microtransaction hell. I might never have tried the site if not for the fact that I consistently failed to win NaNoWriMo for four years straight.
Now, obviously, winning isn’t everything—NaNoWriMo should be fun! But after a very tumultuous 2022, trust me when I say I needed a win. Plus, the 2022 winner t-shirt was just so me, and I had to have it.
I knew that if I wanted to win, I couldn’t rely on my past strategies. I had to step out of my comfort zone. 4TW seemed just different enough to work.
But one of the biggest reasons I took the leap was that they offer an extended free trial during NaNo season. (You’ll find it on the Offers page.) Worse comes to worst, I figured, I wouldn’t win NaNoWriMo, and I’d delete my account. No matter what happened, I’d get a blog post out of the experience.
What My Writing Days Looked Like with 4thewords
I’m very proud to say I wrote every day in November leading up to my win, and I kept my 4TW streak alive by writing at least 444 words a day within their native word processor (even if not all of those 444 words made it to my manuscript—see November 19).
On My Busier Days
By “busier days,” I mostly mean days when I had to head to my day job. I work in the evenings, and that’s the case because I am not a morning person. Even my NaNoWriMo Stats page will tell you I’m a night owl!
Now, because I’m not a morning person, for the most part, I’m not productive before work. Not in the creative ways I need to be for NaNo. So I did what I usually do at my day job: I wrote in a notebook during down times. I never go more than a few minutes without being interrupted, but by the time I clock out at 10pm, I have plenty of material.
Then I hit my local Denny’s because it’s the closest 24-hour restaurant to my place of work. Still, by the time I drove there, sat down, and ordered, I had at most an hour and 40 minutes to type up all the words I’d gotten down during my shift before midnight. At that point, it was a matter of choosing which monster(s) to battle based on approximately how many words I’d handwritten, and then letting my fingers fly.
(This is a special tip from me to you: learning how many words you can fit onto your standard college ruled notebook paper is game-changing for your writing life, particularly your NaNo life. Feeling stuck at your laptop? Switching to writing by hand is great for getting your mind re-engaged! It’s a trick I’ve used so often, I know I can count on about 320 words per handwritten page.)
Once I’d typed up my handwritten words to maintain my 4TW streak and gotten them counted on the NaNoWriMo website, I gave myself two options: continue writing until midnight, or pack it up and go home. I never stayed later so as not to completely jeopardize my sleep schedule.
On My Less Busy Days
By “less busy days,” I mean days where I was either already at my laptop or it was relatively easy for me to pull it out.
(Let me pause here to say that I’m very, very lucky to have a family that’s incredibly supportive of my writing. They understand how important NaNoWriMo is to me, and even on holidays, I can slip away if needed to write. Even on my birthday and Thanksgiving, I pulled out my laptop at some point during the day.)
It will surprise absolutely no one who has ever read a blog post by me that I like the Pomodoro method of managing my writing time, and 4TW is superb for that productivity style. Some days, I battled a bunch of smaller monsters and allowed myself breaks between them. Other times, I took on a ferocious beast of a battle with a faraway deadline like the battle with the Assassins, which required writing 2,100 words within a little over five and a half hours. That’s doable, but instead of—to borrow/co-opt/steal a term—”binge-writing” all the words in a single sitting, I walked away for awhile (or, more accurately, watched a couple YouTube videos) and set an alarm to remind me to come back and finish what I started.
Is 4thewords Worth It?
For me, that answer is a top-of-the-lungs yes. It’s such a yes, I’m going to be purchasing more subscription time before the end of the year, so I can keep playing/writing all throughout 2023!
Thinking about trying out 4TW for yourself? Use my referral code, if you like! We’ll both get free crystals (which can be traded for subscription time on the site, as well as a bunch of other cool stuff) if you decide to stick around after the free trial. My referral code: UBUAA18317
My username is meganfuentes on 4thewords. If you’d like, find me and friend me!
For the Valley! And happy writing!
