Tips for Surviving Both NaNoWriMo and Life

I was asked to do a post on this, so we shall see what happens. I think I'll do it in a "do" and "don't" kind of way...

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Do...

-Say no. Not to everything, mind you. Decide what's more important: spending time with friends or writing. School or writing. Work or writing. Your priorities must be straight. (And I am NOT saying that writing is always the way to go. Sometimes, people are more important.)
-Stay healthy. It'll help, I've been told.
-Be connected. Find other people involved with NaNoWriMo, whether on their website or in real life.
-Try staying up later than normal or getting up earlier than usual. (Notice the "or" there. I don't recommend trying both of these at the same time.)
-Remember that if you don't win, it's not the end of the world. This is something that I've had to learn personally, because I think there's a really huge chance that I'm not going to have 50,000 at the end of this November. However, I'm still going to try my absolute hardest. But I'm not going to sacrifice friendships/family/grades for this thing. (Yes, even school. I may not like it, but it's still a bigger priority than NaNoWriMo.)

Don't...

-Edit. Pleasepleaseplease. November is not for editing. When it comes to NaNoWriMo, it's just a waste of your time. If you edit, you probably (definitely) won't have time to finish 50K words.

-Stop writing. You must keep going. Even after you've hit your word goal for the day, keep going. You never know when time will mysteriously disappear and you won't have time to write.
-Give up. Remember, though, that this isn't a life or death thing. If you don't win, it's okay. You tried. You most likely tried your hardest. That's good.

. . . .

Last November was a bit of a struggle for me. I didn't think I was going to make it until the last few days, but then I just wrote and wrote and wrote. I'm pretty sure I actually finished a day early.
But my point: you have to write (obviously), and you have to do a lot of it. I ended up writing a lot at night, after all of my school was done. It was really hard to actually have a specific time to write, because I didn't know when I was going to be done with school. It was (and is) basically different every day. Like I said before: school is more important than NaNoWriMo. I don't like that fact, but that doesn't change it. Work before play.
If you can schedule writing into your schedule, by all means, I've heard it's a brilliant idea! If not, I suppose we can struggle through writing at random times together!
♥
Bekah Joan