11 steps of Preptober

With NaNoWriMo rapidly approaching, I thought I’d finally get around to posting this. I had originally planned to film this as a youtube video, but I’ve been struck down by a cold/flu type nasty and none of you want to hear that.

So here we are, in blog form instead.

1. Sign up for the NaNo website.
2. Decide whether you’re a planner, pantser or plantser and if you’re a planner/plantser then get planning!
3. Start adding Writing Buddies! Having people around who are working on NaNo, who not only understand what you’re going through but can motivate and encourage you to keep going is ESSENTIAL. To me, at least. I tried to NaNo once with no buddies and it was a massive fail.
4. Follow @nanowordsprints  on twitter. During NaNo they run word sprints pretty much constantly so no matter your time zone, you should be able to find a sprint happening during your writing time. Not sure what a Word Sprint is? It’s a timed writing event. You pick a time, usually on an hour, 00:15, half or 00:45. Occasionally a theme, but mostly you just freewrite for a predetermined amount of time. Then, at the end of that time, everyone shares how many words they managed to write!
5. Declare your project! If you know your title, have a mock cover or a blurb then you can upload them to your ‘novel info’ tab in your profile. See mine here for an example. If you don’t know any of these, you can skip this step or put unknown or just make something up!
6. Get your NaNo Survival Kit ready.
7. Find your Home Region on the forums. Here you can chat to other Wrimos (The collective noun for participants) who live in your area. You can even go to online/IRL write-ins, if you like!
8. Procrastinate. Get it all out of your system now. Whether it’s making a spotify playlist, a pinterest board, doing indepth research* for your novel. Get it out of the way BEFORE November. *Ok, I know that doing research isn’t really procrastination, but it’s still not something you need to be doing during NaNo.
9. Lock your Inner Editor in a box. During November you don’t want to edit or delete any words in your manuscript. If you don’t like something, highlight it for deletion later and re-write it underneath and carry on.
10. Clean your desk/writing space. Nothing makes me feel better than clearing off my desk (and then filling it full of crap again before NaNo starts but that wasn’t my point…)
11. Organise/Go to a Kick-Off Party or Stay Up Till Midnight. Some people like to stay up till Midnight to get a super early start on their word count.

Got any tips you’d add to this list?

Blogs in my NaNoWriMo 2018 Series:
11 Steps of Preptober
NaNoWriMo Desktop Calendars (img heavy)
Helpful NaNoWriMo Forums
NaNoWriMo is a Marathon not a Sprint