Happy Prep-tober: Let's get ready to NaNo! 🎃

Hello friends!

Happy Prep-tober!

Too soon? Not if you want to hit the ground running on November 1 and make the most of NaNoWriMo.

Confession time: I’ve done NaNo a few times but only technically ‘won’ it once, and that was after some truly marathon sessions in the last week of November. No joke, I wrote more than 20,000 in that week. 😪 (For those who don’t know, ‘winning’ NaNoWriMo means writing 50,000 words over the course of the month.)

I’m fortunate that my small city apartment means I’ll never be tagged as a Thanksgiving host, not to mention my husband’s business means that everyone expects me to show up with wine and cheese—and I am happy to oblige!

The stars aligned that year, but I wouldn’t recommend this approach. So the emails this month are going to be dedicated to setting ourselves up for success and minimal stress!

Step 1: Set your goal for November and make a plan

Wait Kerry, I thought you just said the goal is to write 50,000 words? Well, yes, but only if you’re drafting a new novel or writing a bunch of new material for a revision. If you have less than 50K to go on your draft or you’re working through a revision that doesn’t have big holes to fill, you can still take advantage of the energy and dedication that NaNo invites.

Drafting

If you’re doing the 50K goal, that breaks down to 1,666 words per day. But project manager Kerry is here to remind you to BE REALISTIC. Are you going to write every single day in November? Will your schedule allow it, especially at the end of the month if you have a lot of other obligations?

Assuming you take weekends, Thanksgiving, and the day after off, that leaves you 20 days to write. And that means 2,500 words per day.

One important thing to remember (which is true of all drafting, not just during NaNo) is that these words do not have to be perfect. Far from it. I’ll talk in a future email about some things you can do to make them as potentially usable as possible, but once you’re committed, we’re more interested in quantity than quality.

Look at your calendar for November now. Figure out how many days per week you can write and do some math. Most importantly, block off time on your calendar now. Put it in there like it is any other appointment, meeting, or obligation. Make other people aware of it, if necessary. For this month, at least, this time will be sacrosanct. The earlier you commit, the easier it is to work around it and make sure other people will respect it as well.

Revising

If you’re revising, make a quick To-Do list of the tasks you’d like to accomplish. Maybe you take the first week to read the current draft and make an As-Is outline to give yourself a birds-eye view of what you’ve got and then spend the rest of the time working through a revision pass specifically focused on 2-3 major issues you found.

Maybe there’s an aspect of craft that you want to drill down on, that you know is missing or weak. Your first week could be reading a craft book about that skill, then map out a way to apply it to your draft and spend the remaining time working on that to make it sing in your manuscript.

You could also focus this month on doing those things—reading your WIP, making a To-Do list, drilling down on craft—and be ready to jump into your manuscript with both feet in November.

Whatever it is, take the time now to define a specific goal and then break it down in such a way that you have clear actionable steps to get you from start to finish in the month of November. The same ‘rules’ apply: once you’ve defined your tasks, figure out how long they will take and how many days you’ll be working and do some math! If you’ve been a little overambitious, scale back without shame.

If you’re stuck, shoot me a note! I will put on my PM hat and help you think it through.

Next week, we’ll cover how to define some key aspects of your project with a tool called the Blueprint (shout out to Jennie Nash and Author Accelerator for developing it).

Other News

I just received word that my session, Bring Order to Creative Chaos: Project Management for Writers, was accepted for the 2024 Muse and the Marketplace conference! If you’re in the Boston area or tempted to visit, this is a great time of year to be in the city and the Muse conference is excellent—a great mix of craft and publishing industry information. This is the first year we’re back in person post-Covid and I can’t wait!

From 2018’s Muse and the Marketplace closing session—cake and postcards we wrote to ourselves that Grub Street mailed to us six months later! ♥️

I also signed up for 2024’s Thrillerfest so May is going to be a hectic but awesome month! Looking forward to learning a ton and supporting my friend, fellow coach, co-conspirator, and co-executive director of said event Samantha Skal! (NOTE: I’m not the other co-executive director, just all the other things. 😜)

The latest draft of the book is DONE, friends, and if you were one of the kind people who volunteered to beta read, I am on track to have it to you mid-month.

Another newsletter I get (from someone in the web design world, not book coaching) has a fun feature called Community News, which I love. Sometimes she features people working in that space but it’s also an opportunity for people who get the newsletter to shout out things that they are doing. So I invite you to do the same! If you want to share milestones reached, writing events or news, or other book-adjacent things, please feel free to do so and I’ll add them in here.

Last thing! It is Banned Books Week this week (honorary hosting by Levar Burton, who else was OBSESSED with Reading Rainbow as a kid?). If you can, please show your support for this initiative by attending events at your local library, buying or checking out a banned book, choosing a banned book as your book club pick, etc. There are lots of other ideas here.

My former co-worker, friend and fellow writer Ryan La Sala has two (awesome) books that have been challenged or put on banned lists in Texas and Florida. His new book, Beholder, comes out today and is perfect for spooky season, as is his last book, The Honeys (which is also being made into a movie!).

Cheers! ♥️

Kerry