My #1 Nanowrimo Advice: Free Yourself from the Cycle of Deleting

                I'm not doing Nanowrimo this year, but like a nutritionist snacking on curly fries between appointments, I'm going to give those of you who are some advice.

Don't ever delete. Ever.*

                You know what you do. You're typing along and suddenly an imperfection in your previous paragraph catches your eye, like a tiny pimple on an adolescence's face. Then you rewrite one or two sentences and it's still not right. Suddenly you're highlighting the entire paragraph and *click* it's gone forever.

                This is a bad idea for first drafts because, well, all first drafts are one big zit. But it's an especially bad idea for Nanowrimo when every deleted word sets you farther back from your goal. If you're not careful, you could get caught in an endless cycle of typing and deleting, until you're so frustrated that you give up on Nanowrimo all together.

                So breathe. Accept that your writing is a blemish now but you have so much time to fix it. This time is for pure, messy, ugly, wonderful writing. Free yourself from the cycle of deleting.

*Small grammatical and spelling changes are fine. Otherwise you might obsess over them. Just draw the line at fixing a misused or misspelled word or two, not rewriting an entire sentence because it doesn't sound right.