Lifesaving Links for Nanowrimo

Happy Nanowrimo everybody!

Spooktober is now over and Nanowrimo is here, which means that a bunch of us writers are sitting locked in our bedrooms with our laptops or gathering in coffee shops to write our novels. It's a glorious time!

But if you've ever done Nanowrimo before, you know that it isn't all rainbows and butterflies. After a couple days, writing 1667 words a day can become a real struggle.

Fear not! There are lots of tools to keep us on track!

Don't let the word counts slip, you guys. You want to get ahead on your writing so that when you get into the middle of Nanowrimo when everything tends to turn into a chaos in your life, you've got something to fall back on.

Here are my favorite links for Nanowrimo that have saved my daily word count numerous times throughout the years:

Write or Die is a word sprint software that forces you to write under pressure, with a clock counting down the seconds until the time is up. I always use the free version because it's free, and it's really good.

Fantasy Name Generators has fantasy character names, realistic character names, place names, historical names, planet names... it's got all the inspiration you need when you suddenly need a new name for something or someone.

Thesaurus is THE website for finding appropriate synonyms for your character's body language or for describing your world. Just try typing in "sand" and you'll see how many words you get.

Pandora Journey is a youtube channel featuring lots of epic inspirational music that I always turn to if my creative juices are drying out. I just lie on my bed with my eyes closed, or take a walk outside, with the music in my ears and instantly have epicness and magic flowing around in my brain. I also really recommend Two Steps From Hell. Gorgeous music makes a gorgeous story.

Jami Gold's Worksheets are amazing for structuring your novel or finding inspiration for what could possibly happen next.

Ilys is a website kind of similar to Write or Die. It allows you to write without editing at all, because you can only see the latest letter you've typed in. I haven't used this one a lot yet, but it's a super fun tool for those days when you just keep overthinking your story. There's no time for that during Nanowrimo!


And a bonus for my fellow non-English-speaking writers out there who are writing in English, I know you all know this, but google translate is really helpful for finding the right word for that thing you're not sure what it's called :D

I write English just fine, but when you want to write quickly and not have to think too much, I love being able to just translate things (and I do it all the time!) :)

Hope you get lots of writing done this weekend!!

xx Em xx