Preptober 2022
Preptober 2022 is here!
(For those of you who have never heard of NaNoWriMo, head on over to my Preptober 2018 post here.)
Writers all over the world are preparing for National Novel Writing Month, and writers have affectionately dubbed October as “prep-tober” as they get themselves in order before the event begins.
October is for getting organized (determining goals, making checklists, getting notes ready, etc.), preparing the book (plotting, outlining, choosing playlists, etc.), and preparing ourselves (snacks, beverages, rewards, accountability, etc.).
I’m a pantser—I write by the seat of my pants—so I normally don’t plot or plan much. However, my prep-tober this year consisted of figuring out plot hole fixes to my NaNo rewrite of Project Elementals 2 with my coach because SOMEONE was supposed to die at the end of TEG and didn’t, and it messed up the rest of the trilogy. lol. We also worked through pacing and inconsistencies.
I initially wrote Project Elementals 2 during NaNo 2013, and it was HUGE. When I did my reverse outline and showed my coach, she suggested that I cut it in half and make the whole thing a trilogy instead of a duology (or, hell, even a single book like I was struggling to decide on). So now that we’ve gone through the reverse outline and shifted things around to make it better, it’s time for a complete rewrite.
Why a complete rewrite and not just a quick revision? Because I’ve learned A LOT about writing since 2013. Going back over PE2 was cringeworthy. I’m a bare-bones drafter, and it shows. No description, no internalization, head hopping, changing tenses like crazy, pacing all over the place… Yikes. So I’ll use NaNo to make it look decent.
But this year, prep-tober isn’t just for me; my son will also be joining me for NaNoWriMo through the Young Writers Program!
Unlike the 50k words minimum through regular NaNoWriMo, with YWP, he gets to choose his own word count goal. I figured 100 words total would be a good place to start (basically, an entire sentence a day, give or take), but not only is my son pretty wordy, he also got transferred to advanced kindergarten. So I think maybe 500 words would be a better goal. We shall see!
How about you? Even if you don’t write, are you a planner or a pantser in everything you do? How do/would you do prep-tober? Let me know!
Raine