It’s NaNoWriMo season! And we are in week 2 already. In the past few years of participating in this global writing challenge, I’ve experienced that the first week we are quite charged up, bubbling with ideas, scribbling away stanzas after stanzas. It is usually in week 2 when the earlier excitement and frenzy starts to wear off. Ideas are less frequent and words are tough to come by. That’s when we need all the armor out there to tackle this beast of a writing challenge.
Today, we bring to you some of the finest writing tools that will help you keep motivated for NaNoWriMo and achieve those writing goals without burning up. Try these tools on those odd days when motivation is hard to come by and see the difference for yourself!
Writing Platforms
Daily page, Pocket Novel, 750 words, Penzo, are some of the writing platforms where you can write daily and also keep a track of your writing. Some of these platforms also offer incentives for writing daily. What’s better than writing consistently? Well, getting paid for doing it!
Daily Prompts
Websites like WordPress offer daily prompts to writers on their portal to keep their creativity flowing. Join these daily prompts and find something new and exciting to write about every day. What’s more? Meet fellow-writers and soak into varied works to thrive well through the whole month.
Writing Clubs and Groups
Fellow writers can boost your productivity levels like anything! For staying motivated in NaNoWriMo, it is important you surround yourself with like-minded and people with common goals. They will not only ensure that you write daily, but the constant inflow of ideas and talks around the writing event, will surely have you reaching out for your pen in the middle of the night! There’s tons of groups on Facebook, Twitter, and even on the Official NaNoWriMo website that you can join easily.
Coffitivity
Although I normally like to write in a calm environment, a lot of writers claim that cafes and coffee shops are the best places for them to concentrate. It seems that there is some scientific basis for this productivity hack! Many of us, however, reside far from any public workspaces; this is where coziness comes into play.
Coffitivity resembles SoundCloud quite a bit in its most basic version. Instead of providing us with the newest music, Coffitivity gives us access to a collection of ambient noise, which enables us to tune into the creatively stimulating sounds of coffee shops around us, even when we’re working from home.
Google Calendar
Despite their apparent simplicity, Google Calendars are a useful tool for planning. These are functionally simple, aesthetically pleasing, and can be found almost anywhere, including on your phone, laptop, and perhaps even your toaster these days.
What’s even better about utilizing Google Calendars for NaNoWriMo is that your writing objectives may be conveniently added to your regular calendar entries. Not only can you give yourself reminders, but you can also recognize significant achievements along the way.
WriteTrack
WriteTrack is a free goal tracker. It was created with NaNoWriMo in mind—by someone who has won the challenge twice!
You see, WriteTrack has a ton of fantastic goal-setting tools up its sleeve that may assist you in managing your objectives as well as catching up on missed opportunities.
Reverse Dictionary
Reverse Dictionary does exactly what it says it does: rather than allowing you to enter a word and retrieve its definition, it searches for words that match your search terms.
I’m not sure about you, but whenever I can’t think of a term that comes to mind, my writing usually comes to a complete stop. I can barely see it; I can describe it, but I just can’t put my finger on what it is. Since I found it, Reverse Dictionary has helped me out of a lot of difficult circumstances and is by far the best tool I’ve found for handling this problem.
I love Pinterest for providing me with ideas for my writing.
Pinterest is essentially an enormous image-only search engine. After you’ve selected a few photos you like, you may save them to Pinterest boards and further arrange them into subfolders from there. These boards can be viewed on any of your devices as and when you want. So, steal a glance whenever you there’s a lack of motivation for NaNoWriMo.
Grammarly
Editing can take more time than writing itself. That is why we have Grammarly. I just love Grammarly for its quick and easy quality checks saving me more valuable time that I can devote for my writing. With Grammarly, editing is much hassle-free!
Stationery Supplies
For many of us, motivation kicks in when we have the right writing tool. Whether it’s your typewriter or ipad or simply, a pen and paper, having the right writing supplies can help you achieve your NaNoWriMo goals.
But here we are specifically talking about stationery that you love to have around when you write. It could be your pen, notepad, a specific-colored ink, a pen, anything! Make sure you have them all handy and stock them up too. Carry it around with you when away from your writing table, make notes anytime an idea hits.
Feel free to employ these easy writing tools that can help you complete your NaNoWriMo challenge without much fuss.
