[Prep-tober] :: Preparing Life for NaNoWriMo

Hello, Novelist!

November may be for noveling, but for many, getting ready for NaNoWriMo is a project unto itself. We call this month "Prep-tober."

In brief, Prep-tober is anything you do to set yourself up for noveling success once November starts -- and it isn't all directly novel-related. Life keeps happening in November, and people become irrationally annoyed for some reason if you stop showing up to work "because noveling"... and houses don't magically clean themselves... and children inexplicably still want to eat. So, really there are possibly two pieces: preparing to write, and preparing the rest of the world to spend a month with less of you. (I'm looking at you pants-ers. Prep-tober is for you, too!)

The life piece of NaNoWriMo is one that you kind of have to deal with even if you don't want to. The cat and the children still need to be fed. Thanksgiving is still going to happen. And for some reason, everyone still feels entitled to clean socks. (I know, right?)

Life preparations:

Your most critical step is probably going to be to look at your calendar. You know Thanksgiving is still a thing. If you're in college, your exams are basically announced at the beginning of the term. If you're in high school, you can figure you'll have a major-ish "something" in every core subject -- but you also have five glorious days off that you can squirrel yourself away a little longer and still be thought of as responsible.

Ask yourself a few questions:

• What are the events and obligations on your calendar?
• What preparation for these events is necessary? Do you need to make something? Look up recipes? Get ingredients? Block out time for that on your calendar.

Even if you know things come up -- you can make a pretty educated guess at how long it takes to make your famous sweet potato crunch, to get the house company ready, to write an essay, to study for a test, and you can figure time-and-a-half to deal with interruptions.

Block in your writing time

Now that you know when you'll be busy, you can be honest about the days you probably won't write much, and what days you can set aside for a big push. It doesn't feel nearly as bad to plan to write a tenth of what you normally write as it does to have it sneak up on you.

Mark writing time on your calendar. Treat your writing appointments as appointments not nice-to-have's. You're making a promise to yourself. Don't let that get upstaged for just "anything."

One sensible thing that nobody really likes to hear is that... the time you should be sleeping is not -- by default -- the time when you should be writing. Our very scientific studies of what happens to noveling output during crazy 24-hour writing pushes... is that... you rarely get anything you want to keep until after you've had a decent nap. Not that you can't stay up writing... but... when humans don't sleep, they get incoherent... so "sacrificing sleep" really shouldn't be plan A. 

Stocking up:

We all know that having some things on hand at the beginning of the month will make things go smoother all month long. We know we need coffee (okay, I suppose you can choose a lesser beverage instead, if you must); we know we need noveling snacks; we know that we still need to eat some "real" food, too.

• What food items can be prepared ahead? Not just for Thanksgiving -- for your real life.  Having meals that you can just pull out of the freezer and heat -- big deal.
• Are there any 30-minute meals you can make on I can type and cook this at the same time thank you very much mode?
• What noveling snacks do you want to have at hand? 
• Do you need any tools, like notecards?
• Do you need to stake out a location for writing that nobody is allowed to touch? (Personally, I'm downgrading to a netbook with no internet... so that the internet won't bother me while I'm writing.) 

So far, we haven't talked about your novel at all! There is loads more to Prep-tober than planning your novel. 

What else do you do to prepare your life for NaNoWriMo?

We'd love for all of the Baton Rouge area WriMos to join us on Discord to discuss how they are preparing themselves to spend November in a crazy race to write 50,000 words in a month. E-mail redstickwrimos (at) gmail.com for an invitation to the server!