I’ve created my own hashtag to roughly summarize this past week: #NaNO. As in, “I was going to be super productive and get everything done on my to-do list, but #NaNO.” (emphasis on the NO) As in, NaNoWriMo has taken over my life this past week—where everything pretty much kow-tows to ensuring that I meet my goal every day.

On a different note, my coworkers are pretty much awesome. They’re keeping me pretty accountable for my NaNoWriMo word count this year. They’ve also been willing to share some ideas on what to write about, which has saved me on more days than you’d think.

Also, my writing buddies are totally kicking butt and they’re super supportive. If you remember anything from this article: show your writing buddies some love.

If you need a little break from that future success on your laptop, glance through these tips I’ve picked up this week to stay in the game.

Set the Mood

So you can make a playlist based on what kind of music you want to listen to. For example, I can’t type and listen to singing at the same time—so writing time means soundtrack time.

But have you ever had a playlist based on moods? Anger? Anxiety? Maybe you have, maybe you haven’t, but you should check out this blog post about using the same tools that filmmakers use to create movie scenes. You can listen to tracks to help you shape the mood of the scene that’s giving you a particularly hard time.

Throw a Wrench in Your Story

So true story: I’ve been BSing and making up stuff for the past few weeks now. I’ve practically perfected the art of starting with a really broad idea for a scene, and coming out a different exit than I originally thought. Case in point: creating a character with crazy motives that did not exist 24 hours ago. Maybe you guys have already done this in time’s past.

I’m just sayin’—if you’ve written out everything you planned on and NaNoWriMo is still young, just start making up “what if?” situations and see how you and your characters survive them.

I would suggest asking your friends for advice, but so far my friends have suggested killing off a character and plugging in invading aliens. So, don’t be a stiff in the creativity department and write now—think later.

Reward Yourself for Model Behavior

If you’re on track—or even if you’ve decided just to keep writing no matter how far behind you are—you’re awesome. Even if you’re writing but not officially in NaNoWriMo this year—you’re still awesome. Writing of any length deserves recognition.

So reward yourself however you think will keep you motivated. As geeky and ridiculous as it sounds, I reward myself through a fun app called HabitRPG. You get to turn your daily to-do list into a game. If the idea of doing quests, collecting dragons, and buying armor would be your form of currency, I would highly recommend it. I check that thing more than my personal planner.

I know you’ve been hearing a lot from me. Next week, we’ll be hearing from Travis about some awesome character building tactics. He’s working and studying at the moment, but he’s still in our writing group and still someone sane. He’s also been my personal cheerleader for the past 18 days.

Keep fighting the good fight! Until next week.