With the exception of the years in which my daughters were born, I have been participating in NaNoWriMo since 2014. I’ve even won it a few times. It took me a while to figure out a system to ensure that I would be able to complete the 50,000-word goal in just 30 short days, but with it, I know I can win again this year.

First of all, what is NaNoWriMo?

NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month, which is the entire month of November. Once upon a time, a long long time ago (but not really that long ago at all) some people got together and said
“We should have a National Month for writing novels and make it a contest.”
“Interesting idea,” everyone agreed, “but what do you propose?”
“How about we convince everyone to sit down and pound out approximately 1,667 words per day for thirty days for a total of 50,000 words in a month.”
“Genius.” Everyone replied. “We hate it.”

And thus, NaNoWriMo was born. A competition (more or less, against yourself) to see if you have enough discipline to sit down every day and write for however long it takes you to come up with a grand total of 50,000 words by 11:59 on November 30th. Notoriously, I do not.

So how do I get myself the ‘win?’

ADHD brains have a smaller frontal cortex, which means that we have difficulty with executive functions because that area of our brain tends to be short on dopamine. To increase productivity, you increase the dopamine. Do you know what is great at increasing dopamine? FUN! And what is more fun than a good old fashioned game?

“But how do you play this game which allows you to pretend that you’re disciplined and motivated for 30 days?” You ask.

Well, I’m glad you asked.

The Setup:

I keep a notebook. Each page, a brand new day. I put the date at the top of each page of the notebook every morning. Then I make two columns, numbered one through twelve.

“But why?” you wonder.

Man, you are on top of your questions game. I could take a few notes.

The breakdown is this: in order for me to turn it into a game, I take approximately four hours of my day and turn it into a competition with the clock to see how much I can do in a certain period of time. The amount of time varies but averages out at about 10 minutes each. We’ll get to how I do that in a minute. The first column is for the time I spend writing, the second column is for the time I spend taking a break. Now my breaks aren’t really breaks, because as we have all learned about me by now (and I’ve learned it the most-i-est) is that I have ADHD and have a very difficult time getting back to doing something once I’ve sat down or looked at my tv or my phone or social media. As the years go by, I have gotten only slightly better at tearing myself away from things I can sit on my butt and not think about, but probably not enough to be considered a change by scientific standards. So instead of taking an actual rest, I simply change the task that I am doing. So the second column is really the amount of time I spend doing one of five or six chores I decide need to be done that day (one is almost always dishes).

Then I take some D20s. You know, dice with 20 sides. Or if you don’t have any laying around because your husband was never into D&D, then you can use a website such as this one which will work in the exact same way. I roll the D20s, one per line that I made for each column. It doesn’t have to be 12. You could decide that you would like to work more time than that– or less. I often find that it doesn’t even take me two hours to reach 1,667 words when using this method, and sometimes I just stop when I’ve reached that number, or sometimes I keep going. Regardless, I write down the number of words I type during that time period next to the “minutes spent writing” column, so that I can keep track of it as I go.

Anyway, whatever you end up rolling, that will be the number of minutes in which you write. Could be 1 minute, could be 20, but it averages out to around 10 minutes per line. Then you do the same for the second column, and this will be the number of minutes you spend doing one of your six specified chores.

“But how do you decide which chore to work on during the non-writing times?”

I knew I could count on you to ask.

This is where you will need a standard set of six-sided dice like you can find in any board game (or you can just use the website because honestly, that is a lot easier than trying to find things). Roll for each chore line, and there you have it. Whichever chore is associated with the number you roll is what you will be working on for that length of time.

And there you have it. Not only can you win NaNoWriMo, but you can also have a cleaner house in the process because this “game” serves two functions, only one of which is winning NaNoWriMo. The other is getting organized in your downtime. I hope you try this method if you are having difficulty, and I hope it works for you. And if you are participating in NaNoWriMo, this year, good luck, and I hope you win!