Preparations

Its a cool and gloomy day here in Chicago. I'm off of work and attempting to self motivate. 

I've not been writing much as I've been fighting off a nasty cold virus and a mysterious painful pulled neck muscle (mysterious because it happened out of nowhere. Perhaps it's the Universe's way of telling me to slow down, relax, and stop letting things get under my skin). I have a short story in progress and the ladies of my writer's group (Moxie!) are expecting more pages of that very soon.  And of course the omnious shadow of NaNoWriMo looms over me. November 1st is only five short days away and I'll begin my crash course in speed writing.

For those of you unfamiliar, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo for short) is a not-for-profit endeavor by the Office of Letters and Light: "A fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to creative writing." The goal is to write 50,000 new words in just 30 days.

I don't like to fly blind. I'd rather be prepared. I research and read into almost everything I attempt. Based on my findings I've created a few simple plans of action to cross that 50,000 word finish line. It's a three prong plan, "pacing, structure, and caffeine."

The first is to stick to a strict day to day word count of 1700. That way I have a small and attainable daily goal that will keep me on pace.

The next part is to write out on index cards all of the scenes I need for the novel and arrange them in some kind of preliminary order. This way if the white page begins to threaten me, I can pick up the next scene card and continue rolling. That's what I'm putting together today. Some bones.

And lastly, I plan to stock the pantry with lots of coffee. 

Well, lots to do, lots to do!  I better get to it.