Prep Work - Part 0

Any great novel (and most of the bad ones) starts with a great deal of planning, plotting (har har) and, where possible, scheming in order to lay the proper framework into which one may pour the soulful imaginings that pass for content these days.  But before planning can begin, there is one other important step the average author must undertake.

Planning.

Before one can recklessly dive into the world of outlining, storyboarding and otherwise sculpting the bare skeleton of one's designs, one must first plan the plan that is to come.  That's right:  meta-planning.

To call this a "must" is a bit of a misnomer, but the truth is that most of us do it already, or might strongly benefit from it if we do not.  Meta-planning largely involves both aligning ones particular assault vector for approaching the work as a whole, as well as carving out the overall workflow of the writing/editing/sleeping process.

It starts (or at least, mine starts) with scheduling.  NaNoWriMo centers around a set constant ratio:  50,000 words in 30 days.  November will always have 30 days (at least until the Romans realize someone came along and snuck two new months in), but the set number of those days that will be usable for writing varies from year to year and from person to person.

In America at least, there is at least one holiday late in the month to interrupt the normal flow of work.  Writing or typing with hands slick with turkey gravy is generally ill-advised, to say nothing of the effects of tryptophan on the will to continue working in any form.  Beyond that, there will no doubt be days (or parts of days) that are denied the writer in terms of workable hours.

Work, for many of us, is the biggest consideration.  Sticking out an 8+ hour shift without access to our materials or the quiet, interrupt-free environment that is so often a prerequisite to the writing process puts a serious onus on the remaining hours of the day.  Given that another 6-8 hours (if you're lucky) are also dedicated to sleep, we've stranded our writing time on a surprisingly small 8-hour island with interruptions like traffic, dinner and any semblance of a social life all warring for time.

So, scheduling becomes a must.

Figure out all the times you know you won't be writing.  Trips out of town, special occasions, regular after-hours meetings that can't be skipped; mark them all off so that you know how many actual workable nights you have available.

Divide 50,000 by that to get your actual per diem word count.

If your workplace allows you to get away for an hour or so for lunch, mark each workday down with an hour for lunch to add to your total.  Once you figure out your hourly pace (wait till November, it's bound to change), you'll know how much less you have to do in the evenings if you can spare yourself 30-45 minutes each day at lunch.

Worried you won't have time on your lunch break?  Start packing a lunch.  Eat at your desk or near the office if you can to minimize time lost due to travel.  You'll thank yourself later.

The next part of scheduling is the one you're going to hate later, but for most of us, it does prove a time-saver and a fire-lighter-underer.  Let's pretend, for the moment, that that's a word.

Mark out milestones on a regular (preferably weekly) basis.  The day is up to you, whichever day starts your writing week (or ends it, if you prefer), mark the number of words you should have by that point.  Use your per diem count from earlier to get a realistic estimate, in case you wind up temporarily ahead of (or behind) the curve.

The running totals will give you not only a goal to shoot for (and save you constantly breaking out the calculator), they will offer a measuring stick throughout so that you know full well how far ahead or behind you are.  Doing daily estimates can be crippling, and tends to make us fixate on the numbers.  Weekly estimates allow for the much-needed wiggle room without letting us get too far off the mark for too long.

Any time you have a holiday or a string of unavailable days approaching, make a mark immediately after the gap so that you immediately know what the wordcount needs to be when you return.  It should save you time (and human error) recalculating and also put you swiftly back into the writing mindset.

Once you have an idea of what you're real November looks like, it's time to break ground on the easy part:  actually putting together a story.