I’ve only written one thing for NaNo, but for me, the cure was outlining.
I started with a theme that I really wanted to write about (by which I mean a truth that I observed in the world that I wanted to express as a story), developed that into a (mostly) coherent plot, and then broke the story down into moments that I wanted to happen. Once I had the moments, all I had to do was figure out what logical actions my characters could take to get from moment L to moment M, etc.
Since I really wanted to get that story out of my head and onto the page, I was motivated to write. That’s one of the important things that I learned: if the heart of the story, the message that you want to get across, is important to you, you will be more motivated to write it. And, if you know where you want to go to next, then you can plow ahead.
You spend time criticizing the “absolute garbage” of your friend, but you’re going after the small stuff: spelling, grammar, narration, etc. That’s not the difficult bit, and is easily corrected in the editing process. The difficult bit is to write a compelling plot with realistic characters; all of your “tehs” can be corrected to “thes” later.
Terry Goodkind has sold millions of copies of his books, despite the fact that he makes no secret that he’s illiterate. The ideas and the characters are the powerful part; unless you’re Shakespeare and have such a command of the English language that metaphors, alliteration, and puns flow freely from your fingertips, then what words you use don’t matter until you’ve finished your narrative, and go back to improve it.
As for advice: Stop thinking about how you want to say something, and start thinking about what you want to say. The theme of my book was a question: “How can people do bad things while considering themselves good people?” and I wrung a story out of that idea, which is a hugely important question to me. Try and find a question that you want to answer — a truth that you want to express, but can never quite find the right words for. Then, think up a character and tell the story of how that character learned the answer to your question.
I hope this helps, and best of luck in your efforts.
