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I won NaNoWriMo.

In life, you need to celebrate the wins and I needed to celebrate this win.

If you’re a long time reader of this blog, you’ve probably know that I’ve tried for several year to finish NaNoWriMo but never did. This year, I totally kicked it in the gut and stole its lunch money. I’m  totally excited!

In the name of celebration, I did another vlog showing my excitement. I was inspired by vlogger, Poppy at Poppy Writes A Book. You can follower her on Twitter here. Her vlogs are so great and personal, I decided to do one that’s personal as well, though they are not as good as hers.

Winner, winner chicken dinner!

So, if I had to figure how I finished NaNo this year, other than sitting down and writing when I didn’t want to, I’d have to give a lot of the credit to Scrivener, a fantastic piece of writing software. 

No, I’m not getting paid to write this post for Scrivener. How is this software different from Word or other word processors? The ability to have different documents for different scenes is amazing. What’s more amazing, the ability to move around the scenes by dragging them. You can organize those scenes into chapters, upload your background info, and, if you’re into plotting, create index cards that are tied to you scenes.

I used this feature and didn’t write in order. I jumped in the time line to a scene I knew would happen and I wrote all those scenes first. Then I wrote the scenes that lead up to those scenes. And then I wrote the aftermath of those scenes. By jumping back and forth, I was able to keep up momentum and for the most part, I knew exactly what I would be writing on any given day.

Another feature that I LOVED and helped me to finish was the compile feature which allows you to put all your scenes together, insert chapter or page breaks, and save it as a Word, PDF, or text file. It also creates a title page for your project.

But above all that, the feature that helped me the most is the full screen feature. That means I hit a button and the screen would fill with my words. No internet, no start button, no nothing–nothing else is visible, only my text. When it came to word sprints, this was extremely helpful.

So, if you’re wanting to use it there’s a 30 uses free trial. (That’s uses, not days.) I used the heck out of that trial and then paid my $40 for it. It’s worth the money, I promise.

Did you finish NaNoWriMo? What helped you?