At the Whiting Writers’ Awards last month, we interviewed a few of the winners of the $50,000 prize.  Author Elif Batuman shared some important advice to remember about National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)–it’s the perfect time to get bad writing out of your system.

Here’s an excerpt from the video interview: “My advice is keep writing. No time you spend writing will be wasted—even if you write something that’s bad. Everyone has a certain amount of bad writing to get out of their system. It’s important not to censor yourself and not to get upset or demoralized when you write bad stuff.”

Batuman won a nonfiction Whiting for her book, Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them. Press play on the video above to watch. This is our fifteenth NaNoWriMo Tip of the Day. As writers around the country join the writing marathon this month, we will share one piece of advice or writing tool to help you cope with this daunting project.