If you’re in the middle of your NaNoWriMo draft and you feel like your novel lacks the kind of sensory detail that other authors seem to include naturally—the kind of writing that makes you feel like you’re inside the story, with the characters, feeling what they’re feeling—it might be time to start carrying an observational notebook.

It’s time for the annual tradition of hand-wringing, self-loathing, and maybe — just maybe — writing a novel in 30 days. National Novel Writing Month has become a beacon of hope each November for the many high achievers who desire to not only start, but also finish a draft of a novel in one month.

Are you embarking on a one-month quest to write the first draft of that novel you’ve been dreaming of? Or perhaps you just want to feed off the energy of the 400,000 people who are. Here are our top tips for aspiring novelists.

If you dream of becoming a writer, you have to eventually sit down and write. Whether you’re doing National Novel Writing Month in November, or you dream of being a writer “someday”, the first inescapable step is making the time to do it. Here’s a 15-minute exercise toward that end that you can do today.

Tim Clare's Couch to 80K writing podcast is a delightful, intense, encouraging eight-week journey towards writing a novel. For the best experience, go into it blind; all you need to know is that it's good and it's appropriate for any experience level. If you want to know more, keep reading, but be aware that here be spoilers.

Every November, NaNoWriMo challenges writers and would-be writers to knock out a novel over the course of the month. It's a challenge I've tried at least half a dozen times and completed once. Despite my limited success rate, I always try again the next year, because frankly, it's a pretty fun exercise, even if I don't always manage to finish.

This past month I participated in National Novel Writing Month (also known as "NaNoWriMo"). It was fun, exhausting, stressful and, at times, miserable. But it was also one of the greatest lessons I've ever learned regarding time management and creativity.

This one is for the hardcore novel writers who are doubting themselves, the ones who committed last month to writing 50,000 words in 30 days, but then... uh, something happened.

National Novel Writing Month is all about putting your head down and cranking out as many words as you can, but it can still be fun to make it a social experience, too. A write-in is just what you need to keep you and your fellow scribblers motivated. Here's how to set one up.

Julian Gough, Irish novelist, memoirist, poet and playwright, gives densely packed advice in his essay How To Edit Your Own Lousy Writing. He explains the "job" that a first, second and third draft each do, editing a hypothetical scene as a concrete example.

One of the best things about NaNoWriMo, or any terrifying deadline, is that it forces you to write quickly. (Hello, procrastinators.) If writing quickly is your stated goal, then you don't have time to do the number one thing that interrupts your writing flow: Think about whether what you're writing is good.

How's NaNoWriMo going? Do you have 20 per cent of a novel on your hard drive yet? If not, maybe you're having trouble thinking of what to write. Fortunately, there's a place on nanowrimo.org that is full of ideas ripe for the stealing.

Do you have the start of your novel in a Google doc? A note on your phone? Or perhaps you spent the first week of NaNoWriMo meticulously organising an empty outline in Scrivener? Here are some of the writing tools that amateur novelists swear by.

Good morning, National Novel Writing Month participants! Did you do your 1667 words this morning? What are you writing about this year?

This year, I will write my tenth terrible novel. I do this every November; it's part of the NaNoWriMo tradition. I've never published these novels, but I grow as a writer and as a human being every time I write one. Let me tell you why it's worthwhile.

If you're planning on cranking out the next great novel this November for NaNoWriMo, you might want to sharpen your craft first. These online courses will get your creative writing skills in ship shape.

November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo and that means that if you haven't started your story yet, now is the perfect time. Writing has a ton of mental and emotional benefits, so let's get started! Here are some tools that will help.

#NaNoWriMo. A simple-sounding challenge: write a brand-new novel of at least 50,000 words during the month of November. For three years in a row, I started a NaNoWriMo novel but failed to finish it. This year was different. Here's how I finally succeeded.

November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for those in the know, and already hundreds of thousands of participants will be busily writing as part of their journey to becoming novelists. Yet those who have to balance novel writing with full time work, family and social life might find it hard to know when to take a spare moment to write. Should you set your alarm an hour early and power through your writing before breakfast, or sit down after dinner when all the day's work is done? How about a sneaky lunchtime writing sesh? One scientific study claims to have solved this conundrum once and for all.