Modern Authors

So, there’s only one more week until NaNoWriMo! (give or take) Is everybody ready?

First things first. Things have been a little crazy for me this week, so the weekly story may be a little late. It will come, just maybe not by the weekend.

With that in mind, I want to talk about NaNoWriMo a little bit, and share what I’m doing. One of the big things I’m doing is prepping a little more than in the past. I’m using worksheets from here to develop my story. They are all very good, but the one that helped me the most is the plotting worksheet. If you haven’t got as much planned as you might have wanted, try them out, I think they’ll help.

I also thought I’d share a little bit about my story. This isn’t something I’ve done in the past, so let me know what you think. The story is called The Forgotten. It’s actually going to be based on a flash fiction I wrote by the same name. You can find that here. It won’t follow the main character of that story; however, it will follow a woman named Rayelle. Rayelle has heard stories like that for a long time. She was told that no matter what, she should never go outside at night. To do that would be certain death. One night, she had enough and ventured outside. To everyone’s surprise she didn’t die. She goes on a campaign to save as many people from the night as she can, until she catches the attention of entities that were better left alone.

I’m hoping it’ll turn out well. I’ll post more about it as it get’s going. In the meantime, what is everyone else doing? What exciting stories do you have bouncing around in your head? And most importantly, are you ready?

So, as anyone who does NaNoWriMo knows, October is the official prep month. It’s the month to get outlines made, to get character sheets filled in and to stress yourself out before you even get started writing! It’s so exciting! So, my question is; if you’re doing NaNoWriMo, what are you doing to prepare? I know plenty of people are pantsers, but almost everybody prepares in some way. Even if it’s just getting extra snacks and making sure your writing space is extra comfy, it pays to be at least a little prepared.

As for me? Well, I’m doing the normal stuff. I’m thinking about how I’ll write it. Am I going to do pencil and paper, or write entirely on computer? What software will I use? For some reason, I always feel like I need to switch it up every year. This year, I have a dedicated writing laptop that only has writing software (Scrivener, FocusWriter) on it. I’ll also be using the default notes app on my phone for when I can’t get to the laptop. Nothing fancy there as the main reason for that is just to write down things real quick and transfer to the laptop later.

I’ve also been working on my writing habit since last year. I’ve been making sure to write at least semi-regularly, even if I don’t have anything in particular to say that day. You can only get better by doing, right? More recently, I made a promise to write in this blog at least once a week. So far, I’ve kept that promise (if you haven’t seen this weeks post, you can find it here) and I intend to keep it in the future. The posts may become more spartan during NaNoWriMo, but I fully intend to keep them coming.

Lastly, I’ve been working on the story itself. I’ve got a couple of important characters started and a bullet list of what needs to be included. It’s not exactly a plot outline yet, but I’m working on it. I may post pieces of my prep here later, but for now I’ll just leave you with the question. What have you done for prep?