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Prepping for Preptober
Hey, everybody! It’s been a minute, as I lost most of July to my big move, and August to setting up our new apartment once we finally moved in, and now it’s September already. Back to school, back to work… and time to start prepping for Preptober! What’s Preptober, you ask? It’s the unofficial planning month, before NaNoWriMo takes off in November. In short: the entire month of October is devoted to brainstorming, plotting, character sketching, figuring out settings and scenes, and otherwise scribbling notes towards what will, ultimately, become your novel. That’s not cheating, either! You’re totally allowed to plan as much as you like before you jump in…
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Top 10 #NaNoWriMo Prep Tips
As you may already know, I am a NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) enthusiast. So when October rolls around, that means it’s prime Prep Season, and I start to get a little giddy. Additionally, since I am a confirmed NaNoWriMo Rebel (aka Cheater), this also means it’s the time of year when I start pondering which of my WIPs I will bring into the wonderful world of NaNoWriMo, scrubbing and polishing and writing additional words to create a much more completed manuscript. Basically, it’s house-cleaning for my mind – and my hard drive full of ideas. Which brings me to today’s Top 10 List. If you’ve never participated in NaNoWriMo,…
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Outlining doesn’t have to suck: From brainstorm to novel
As Chuck Wendig has recently written on his blog, outlining doesn’t have to be an exercise in high school-esque futility. Indeed, it’s a fundamental step towards getting your novel down on paper. And even a reformed pantser like me has embraced the joys – or at least the relative painlessness – of outlining. (I’ve written about my methodology here in case you’re curious.) So what the hell does a completed outline actually look like? Today’s your lucky day, pal, ’cause I’ve got your novel outline right here! This is, in fact, the final outline I used to create my Three Day Novel, Ninjas of the 512. It’s the very same…
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Creating an outline that won’t kill your creativity
I’ve written a variety of novel manuscripts over the years, many during the noveling month of November. My typical approach to writing is commonly referred to as “flying by the seat of your pants,” and although this may work in short doses, it is much harder to sustain in novel form. In the past I avoided the traditional outline, with its spontaneity-crushing fascism, convinced it was a tool used by only the most mad or tortured of authors, chained to their writing desks and forced to retroactively outline their novels as cruel punishment by their publishing companies (who were probably stumped as to how to market their books, hence the…
