Preptober: Gearing Up for National Novel Writing Month

I know what you're thinking: "NaNoWriMo ALREADY??? Pump the brakes, Ortega, NaNoWriMo isn’t for another month!”


Yeah well I’m an overachiever I guess. I’m also very, very superstitious. And it's time to start planning.

Image courtesy of Fangirl Likes

Last year, I used the 90-Day Novel process to prep for NaNoWriMo. In this post from last October, I was only on day twelve and very worried about actually keeping up with the daily writing requirements. Well, as it turns out, the process worked really well for me and acted as a super awesome amazing rad way to get myself in the right mindset for writing that manuscript. And ultimately, that’s the manuscript that helped me sign with my agent. So I’d say the foundations I laid down last October were not a waste of time.


Of course, my superstitious habit-driven brain has been screaming at me for the past month that I have to do things exactly the same way this year or I WILL FAIL.


Being in my brain is fun J


Anyway. I’m starting the prep process on October 3. For the past month, I’ve been writing down ideas as they came to me – my coworkers think I’m a very diligent note-taker, and I am, but it’s half work stuff and half fiction – and I already have about 30 pages of world building, character notes, and a rough outline. I'm very excited to get started, but I'm also trying to manage my expectations. I very much doubt that things are going to go as well as they did last year. But I can dream.

Anybody else doing NaNoWriMo prep in October, aka Preptober? How do you prepare? Are you more of a pantser or a planner, or maybe a plantser? Drop a comment and let us know!