NaNo Thoughts

Next Monday starts the November Madness known as NaNoWriMo and I have to admit I'm looking forward to it...most of the time.  I have my idea though I still have a lot of pondering to do.  I have to finalize some character names too.  And...I don't have a title yet.  Which is unusual since I normally have titles first. There is a possible title I'm considering but no decision has been made yet. I hope to get most of the plotting, names and such finished today.

I've also added a word count widget to the sidebar of the blog just so y'all can keep up with the numbers without having to go to the NaNo site.

And speaking of the NaNo site...they have some great forums there however they can be a huge time suck. What you plan to be a 5 minute "break" cause you are stuck on a scene often ends up into an hour or more lost.  So, leave the forums until you have your daily word count down.  Turn browsing the forums into a reward.

Also, turn off the internet while you are writing.  Don't worry about checking email, facebook or twitter.  They can wait.  I know it sounds unreal, but the world won't end if you don't check 'em out every fifteen minutes.  :-)

Need a word count meter?  Try StoryToolz.  You can have up to three meters going and they are simple to update.

To finish NaNo with a 50k word count you need to write 1,667 words each day.  Thing is, Thanksgiving comes around in November.  So, if you are going to be traveling to family or having them come to your place and won't be writing for a day or two, get some extra words whenever you can. 

Most of all...

No matter how you do during NaNo, you'll have more words written at the end of the month than when you started on the first.  And that's a good thing.