Hello fellow NaNoWriMo adventurers! As some of you may know, I write the first drafts of my Mark of the Storyteller series during NaNoWriMo and I also teach a bootcamp class to help people get their novels off the ground. I decided in 2016 to put all these lessons online to help as many other NaNos as I can, so here they are! You’ll find links below to the various posts about NaNoWriMo prep, along with suggested times to do them.

• Prep Work #1 (First week of October)
• Plotting #2A (Second week of October)
• Plotting #2B (Second week of October)
• Plotting #2C (Second week of October)
• Character Building #3 (Third week of October)
• World Building #4 (Fourth week of October)

If you want to follow along with my progress for NaNoWriMo, friend me on nanowrimo.org! My username is writerlybliss.

Speaking of me, I always learn something new about myself, and my writing, when I do NaNoWriMo. Here is a small sampling…

• The best soundtrack for me to work to is silence punctuated by the keystrokes of other writers. A sort of acoustic peer pressure if you will.
• When setting up a sequel, it’s very hard trying to figure out when and how to introduce aspects of the characters the readers will need to be reminded about.
• The brighter my nail polish, the faster I write. Which is a problem because I can’t keep my nails painted as a) it flakes off so fast and b) my nails hate it. I guess one month of polish isn’t too bad though…I’ve gone through teal, iridescent peach, purple…

That’s all folks!