preptober tips

welcome to another blog post! today we’ll be covering “preptober”, which obviously takes place in the month of october, leading up to national novel writing month (aka nanowrimo). nanowrimo is a challenge to write fifty thousand words in the span of thirty days. here are my best tips to prepare for this challenge!

1) get in the mood. set up a writing area and schedule that makes you excited to write. nanowrimo is a lot of effort and time, but it’s a really fun challenge! decorate your desk and romanticize the writing process.

2) decide on a project. there are two main options for nanowrimo, and those are a) continue your current project or b) start a new one. if you decide to continue a current work in progress, i suggest writing down a few bullet points about what you want to write about as a guide for the month. if you decided to start a new story, this will require a bit more planning.

3) plan the new project. if this was the option you decided on, i suggest you have some semblance of an outline. in my experience, this is what has helped me get further into projects, but you can plan as much or as little as you want. first start with sketching out the characters, including their motivation, desire, goal, fear, and backstory. then move onto the plot. i suggest writing a sectioned list of events you want to include or using exterior sources to plan it following a plot structure. finally, if you story requires it, next up is worldbuilding. write some notes about the most impactful locations and pieces of information to your novel.

4) set reminders, goals, and rewards. these are great ways to get your motivation up when you’re struggling. rewards such as “i’ll watch twenty minutes of a tv show if i write six hundred words”, etc. etc. gets me to work harder at getting words on my document.

my final piece of advice is this: keep in mind this is a rough, rough draft. don’t edit as you go, and don’t worry about how “good” it is. the first draft is meant for the author to tell themself the story and get to know the characters. that said, thank you for reading and good luck in preptober!

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