NaNoWriMo 2011

Hey internet type people! I hope your week has been great, or at least better than mine, but we're not here to talk about that.  I want to talk about something that I found  out about a year ago and have been itching the last couple of months to get started on it.

National Novel Writing Month, otherwise known as NaNoWriMo or in short, just NaNo.

If you don't know what NaNo is, it's quite simple to explain. You write a novel of at least 50,000 words in the month of November.  It probably sounds a bit crazy if you've never heard of it before, because I know when I first heard of NaNo I couldn't help but think that everyone was just nuts to do such a thing.

I participated in NaNo last year, though I didn't get very far.  I only ended up with about 4,000 words, but for me considering what I was going through a year ago I think I did a good job.  This year however, I was thinking I was going to have a little bit more time to put in the effort for NaNo but now I'm beginning to second guess that assumption.

Here's some things I"m going to be doing over the next eighteen days.

1. Write the ideas I've come up with for my novel down. Things change through out the course of NaNo, I know this even from what little I accomplished last year. But it's always a good start to have some beginning thoughts down as you get started.
2. Free write.  I never really got around to doing any free writes last year before NaNo started, but I've heard that it helps your mind become open to just write and not really worry about what you're writing.
3. Marking the days where I absolutely can not write off of the calendar.  Not only is Thanksgiving in NaNo month, but so is our show.  I know for a fact there will be at most seven full days I won't be able to write during NaNo.  It's always good to know when you won't be able to write so you can make up those lost word counts on a day where you might have more time to write or you simply just ended up writing more than the daily 1,667 words.
4. Give some thought to character names.  I always, always, ALWAYS get hung up on names when I do writing projects. So, considering I have a strong idea for my plot line I'm going to go ahead and name my main characters so there's one less thing to worry about when NaNo starts.
5. Make lists.  Lists including things I want to happen, settings, special objects, and any other specific things that I might want to include in my novel at some point.  This way, I won't forget about them or if I have troubles of writer's block appearing (which I hope won't happen) I can have some things to work into my novel to help fuel some brain power.
6. Get excited.  I'm already pretty excited for NaNo to start again. But I'm hoping that I'll get so excited over it this year my excitement will continue through the entire process and help me finish my novel this year.

I'm sure you'll be hearing more of my NaNo planning in the coming days; I might even be needing some help on a few things...  If any of you are by chance planning on doing NaNo send me an e-mail (nerdfighter2012@hotmail.com)!

If you'd like more info on NaNo just go to NaNoWriMo.org

Happy planning!