Happy #Preptober everyone! 🎃👻

I love this time of year. You get to dress in cozy layers, drink hot tea and coffee all day, decorate for Halloween, and consume all things pumpkin spice and cinnamon!

But besides all that, it’s also a month of intense preparation for any writer who’s planning to participate in NaNoWriMo.

What is NaNoWriMo?

NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. It’s a worldwide write-a-thon that occurs every year during the month of November.

On November 1st, participants start working towards the goal of writing 50,000 words by 11:59 pm on November 30th. That might sound crazy, but it’s a pretty popular event in the #writingcommunity.

Thankfully, there’s still PLENTY of time to prepare!

Why do you need to plan for NaNoWriMo?

The first few times I attempted to write a novel during NaNoWriMo I crashed and burned miserably. I did a lot of things wrong, but the main one was not planning and outlining my story before NaNoWriMo started.

I thought that having a good imagination and some ideas for a story meant I could show up on day one and successfully write a 50,000-word draft in 30-days. Long story short, I “failed” NaNoWriMo — and it didn’t feel good AT ALL.

And that’s why I wrote this guide to NaNoWriMo planning — so you could avoid the mistakes I made and “win” NaNoWriMo.

To set you up for success, I’m going to walk you through the first 10 steps to take BEFORE embarking on your month-long NaNoWriMo adventure. My hope is that you’ll not only “win” NaNoWriMo but that you’ll also walk away with a finished first draft of your story.

The best part? You can use everything you learn in this series to plan and outline ANY book you write, whether it’s during NaNoWriMo or not. Let’s dive in!

Continue reading HERE