Hello friends! As the leaves begin to fall, it’s time to get ready for one of my most favorite times of the year: NaNoWriMo! In case you aren’t familiar with it, NaNoWriMo (which stands for National Novel Writing Month) is a month-long writing challenge during the month of November to write 50,000 words, which is the minimum word count for a novel. In this blog post, I want to share what I’ve been doing to prepare for this year’s challenge. I have yet to even get close to winning NaNoWriMo in the past. I am anticipating failing for the fourth year in a row this year, as I am quie simply too busy to write that much in such a short period of time. That being said, I am really looking forward to seeing how much I can (realistically) write in a month as I begin working on Kolyra vers. V (I really need to change the name of it, but I’m out of ideas at the moment).
PLANNING WHEN I’LL WRITE
One thing is for certain regarding this challenge: it takes a lot of time. Writing 50,000 words is a lot, and it boils down to about 1,667 words per day. I usually try to write in the evening, after I’ve done my night routine and before I settle in to read. This is simply because I find it much easier to focus in the evening, as opposed to during the day. However, my writing block is currently only penciled in for 30 minutes, so I want to increase this to maybe an hour or an hour and a half. I want to try to spend a bit less time on other hobby work, so I can do my night routine earlier. I’ll also leave less time for reading, so that I have a bigger chunk of time to spend writing.
PICKING GENRE, CHARACTERS, LOCATION, & GENERAL VIBES
In the past, I’ve oscillated between genres and struggled to pick between several different ideas. I was always convinced that I could fit everything into one story—but realistically, I couldn’t (it’s admirable, really, how hard I tried to make everything fit into one big universe). So, this year, I’ve resolved to pick just one idea, with one set of characters, in one clearly defined genre, and make it all set in one general location. The other ideas can be written at another time.
CHARACTER & LOCATION PLANNING
I’ve been really trying to focus on nailing down the main characters and focusing on their relationships to one another and to the events happening around them. How do they work together or hinder one another, and what do they do about the problems that exist in their world? Similarly, I’m working on refining what I want their world to actually be like. At the moment I’m working with a small setting (most of the story is contained to one location, at least as of right now), so this hasn’t been particularly challenging, but I also want to be able to explore what the broader world is like.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Probably the hardest part so far has been creating a chapter outline. I generally always have an idea of the start of a story and the end of it, but I often struggle to figure out the middle. However, I’ve realized that if I even want a shot at completing NaNoWriMo, I NEED an outline. So, that’s what I’ve spent the past few weeks focusing on: writing out ideas for concrete scenes that help us get from point A to point B. I’m definitely still trying to fill in some of the gaps, but I’m pleased with how much I’ve been able to write down. At first, I just started writing down every scene idea I had, and then I started sorting them into chronological order. Very soon, I’m going to go through and separate things into chapters, so that I’ll have a handy chapter outline ready for November.
That’s what I’ve been working on to prepare for NaNoWriMo 2024! It will be a tough challenge, but I’m really looking forward to doing as much writing as I can, and having fun throughout the process! Thanks for reading <33
