WRITING

Are you Ready? Nope!

Day 20 Preptober writing prompt challenge

Day 20: Do you feel ready for NaNoWriMo? What can you do in the next 10 days to get ready?

Question from the Preptober 31 Day Challenge from the Character Collective.

Do I feel ready for NaNoWriMo

No.

Nope.

Definitely no.

Short answer: No.

Long answer: Hell no.

Well, that covers the first part. I think we’ve clearly established that, no, I do not feel ready for NaNoWriMo. But having said that, I know exactly what I need to do to get ready. So, I’m not concerned. Basically, I’m not ready for NaNoWriMo to start today but that doesn’t mean I won’t be ready for it to start on November 1st. I will be very ready for that.

What can I do in the next 10 days to get ready?

There are a few things.

1. Preptober challenges: Keep doing these Prebtober challenges because man, they’re giving me insight I didn’t expect it. They’ve been absolutely brilliant and moving forward, these are questions I’m going to ask at the start of every novel because they dig so deep, even when they seem completely innocuous.
2. Flesh out my beat sheet: I have a very very basic overview beat sheet at the moment and I’m going to flesh that out and get a bit more clarity around what each section of my beat sheet entails and the overview of each section.
3. Build my outline: After I flesh out my beat sheet, I’ll start brain-dumping my events and situations and then grouping them together and aligning them into chapters within my beat sheet.
4. Dot point chapters: Once I have my chapters, I’ll begin dot pointing out the events within those chapters.
5. Set up Scrivener: All of that will go into Scrivener. Scrivener is my novel organization software of choice. I’ve tried a few of the others like campfire and novel factory, and they all have solid aspects but for me personally, Scrivener is the one that I know best and the one that works for me right now. I’ll set up my sections and chapters so that on November 1, I’m ready to write.
6. Test audio transcription software: I need to test my audio recording options, simply because some things have changed. I’ve come across a new transcription software that I’m using right now to audio record this article, and it’s been fantastic. So, in the next 10 days, I need to compare Dragon Naturally Speaking (which is what I’ve been using up until now) with this new program, Otter, to see which gives me a better result — which gives me the cleanest yeet draft (aka dumbest version, aka first draft).
7. Meditate: I need to spend some time meditating and connecting with my characters and letting them tell me the story so that I can do all of the things above.

I’ll be ready

That’s why I know that, even though I don’t feel ready for NaNoWriMo right now, I will be on November 1, because I know exactly what I need to do. I’ve been around the block a few times with writing books. That’s not the hard part — at least, not for me. The difficult part for me is what happens after the yeet draft is written, but that’s a whole other story.

Also, I made a decision today. Over on my publication, Rainbow Circus, I’m not just going to share the polished, edited, words of my NaNoWriMo project. I’m going to show you every step of the way. I’m going to share my brain-dumps and my messy yeet version before I’ve cleaned it up. I’m going to show the raw nuts and bolts of writing a book. So if that interests you, please come along for the journey. In the next few days, I’ll be starting the process above by getting clarity on my beat sheet and I’ll be sharing it there. It’s going to be a fun ride. Come play.

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