I’m barely squeaking in before my bedtime (yes, I go to bed early these days), but I got it done. There were a few points in the day where I was worried, but I even managed to take the kids to the library and get some grocery shopping done. So I think I had a [...]

Have you ever underestimated the amount of time something would take? Or underestimated the amount of time that would be stolen from working on that something? I did both of those things. I hadn’t looked at my 30 Days of PreWriting posts since I first put them up. I expected to have to fix a [...]

One week before NaNoWriMo began, my uncle was murdered. And everyone in my head went silent. I have never felt so completely drained of creativity and imagination. The entire week, as I spent time with my family, avoided reading increasingly negative news articles, and prepared to attend the funeral, I was also thinking about the [...]

Today’s Link: www.nanowrimo.org First of all, if you haven’t signed up on the NaNoWriMo website, go do it. I’ll wait. Really. I’ve got time. The fact is, everything that I’ve said, and probably more can be found on that site. It’s also the way you win (by reporting your word count to the site). And, [...]

Today’s Link: http://www.jennymeyerhoff.com/writers.html This author has a lot of good advice on her page. But the really great stuff is her worksheets. She says that she’ll pull them out and go through them whenever she gets to a tough spot and I have to say, they probably work for that. I think they’d also work [...]

Today’s Link: http://www.wikihow.com/Participate-in-NaNoWriMo So I realized that we’ve been spending all this time preparing for NaNoWriMo and maybe not everyone knows exactly what it is or how it works. So today’s link helps with signing up, figuring out your novel, preparing for the month, staying motivated, and even winning. It’s pretty important stuff, and the [...]

Today’s Link: http://www.wikihow.com/Plan-out-a-Novel I like this link, mostly because it’s a whole different system of planning than anything we’ve looked at so far this month. Though, it’s the sort of system that works better if you have more time, it could easily be used to maximize the last few days before November begins. It pretty [...]

Today’s Link: http://www.wikihow.com/Come-Up-with-a-Topic-to-Write-About Okay, I know I said I’d given you as many as you could possibly need. But just in case, I found a couple more. For those of you that still still still don’t know what to write about, here’s an article about finding a topic. Basically, it’s brainstorming, but it’s a little [...]

Today’s Link: http://procrastinatingwritersblog.com/2009/09/get-ready-for-national-novel-writing-month/ I’ve pretty much linked to as many sites as you could possibly need for NaNoWriMo. Now, it’s time to talk about the other things you’ll need to think about in order to prepare for the month. Like stockpiling chocolate. Or figuring out what 1667 words looks like and how long it takes [...]

Today’s Link: http://www.davidniallwilson.com/?s=nanowrimo%2Bscheduling&submit.x=0&submit.y=0&submit=Search We’ve been working hard. We either have an outline, we’re working on our outline, or we’re still desperately behind. That’s fine. Whatever place you’re at, now might be a good time to take a day or two off. Take this writer’s advice and start thinking about scheduling and time management now. I [...]