NaNoWriMo

Hi Preppers! What are you working on right now in lead-up to NaNo to ensure you stay on track next month?

Currently, I've got most of 'book 2' (working title, haha) plotted out from four protagonists' points of view, but I'm hemming and hawwing over whether a 'book 3' needs to happen, and where I should push some of those 'BIG THING HAPPENS, AND THEN...' moments over into it.

I've also figured that if I write 2667 words per day, I get four 2-day weekends, so I'm going to be trying to hit that daily word-count from Sunday->Thursday or maybe Tuesday->Saturday so I get one work day off and one weekend day off... but I haven't decided yet.

I'm so stoked for November already!

Sounds like you're in a good place to be! I'm with you on the days off. It sucks because I have two conventions in November on the weekends, and normally I go out to write with Redbeard. The past couple years we have done 4-6 outings each Nov, each time writing 7k-10k, then filling in the gaps at home. I hope we'll get the chance to do at least a couple outings.

I'm currently deciding if I want to try to prep or pants. If I pants, I have literally ZERO ideas. True pantsing, lol. If I prep, it would be to add more meat onto an existing draft--normally a no-no, but something I've had luck with in the past. In this case, I have to do some outlining to figure out exactly what needs to get written, since there's less freedom in just letting the plot go wherever it wants to. I know there's another 100k-ish words I can put into this draft, I just dunno exactly WHERE.

That sounds lovely! My SO and I like to hit up coffee shops during the other 11 months, and we inherited running a local pub write in. I'm kind of terrified of running this year's, lol.

What kind of conventions are you attending?

Faeriecon and Rhode Island Comic Con! I vend, so there's also all the prep work. Having a pub to write in sounds so coooool!

It's pretty cool! It's a nerd pub, so everything is themed on various fandom stuff. Very friendly staff.

I haven't had much experience with vending. I hope the prep doesn't eat up too much of your time! It sounds like you've got some serious nano wins under your belt at least... I've found if you're going to pick up where you left off, it's good to get into the nitty gritty of what scenes are missing, but also give yourself some leeway to branch off into an au of your own story... Gives a bit of flexibility and might help break writer's block.

I'm going to be doing something a little bit different, as I'll be writing a comic script for a project I want to illustrate. I also have several ideas for visual novel games that I want to write scripts for too. So that's what I'll be doing. For the most part I'm going to be pretty laid back and don't really have a word count goal, I just want to have a complete first draft for something by end of November.

Oh, that sounds very challenging! Part of the ability to win NaNo for me is to be able to let the words ramble on into paragraphs. Working in script mode where one sentence can easily encompass an entire page's-worth of frames would make my noggin explode.

I wish you luck, though, that sounds deeply rewarding! I've always wanted to make a graphic novel AND a visual novel, but haven't figured out how to keep the drive after I've got all the pieces in place to start working on it! If you have tips, let me know.

I actually set up my main character on here as an rp character and really developed the world, characters and plot. It was so much easier using this site's format than the Evernote templates! And I wrote a little test prologue to see if it would work and well, it worked really good. I'm itching to start the actual story!

This is just so unbelievably cool. Are you willing to share a little art as you go?

The logistics of that word count get me every year. Sounds like a great plan! I'm just figuring that if I write at least 3-4 chapters a week, I'll stay on track. My book is about 12 chapters long as I've outlined it's progression, but things always change so we'll see.

What do you do when writer's block hits?

Not gonna be hitting it as hard as previous years. I am only planning for about 50k-ish or a little more. I also wanna finish in under a week. I am going to try to do at least 9k a day. I wrote my character Merin four years in a row, and this time it's an Eli story, so I am not sure yet how that is going to go.