Preptober Checklist

Use this checklist as a way to do the first thing on it: ESTABLISH A ROUTINE. If you work on ONE checklist item each time you sit down during October, you will gather together all the things (tangible and intangible) you will need to successfully write 50,000 words of a novel during November in National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo.

Establish a routine

In order to write 50,000 words in one month, you need to write 1,667 words each day. If you lose a day, you will have to write 3,334 the next time you write. If you write only on the weekends, trying to make up for 3 or 4 days each time, you’ll need 5,001, or 6,668 words. The average person types about 30 words per minute, or 1,800 words in an hour — if they aren’t thinking about sentence structure, grammar or pausing to think about character details, goals, motivations, or conflicts.

So, set aside one hour. Sixty minutes. 3600 seconds. If you can do that every day, or work up to it over the course of October, then you’ll get your brain and body used to using that time to be creative. It takes approximately 3 weeks to build a habit. You’ve got a little more than 4 weeks. Easy peasy.

Figure out what will work best for you. Will you get up an hour earlier? Go to bed an hour later? Skip one streaming show for the month?

But having the time in place is just the first step. You need to know, when you sit down, what you will be doing. You don’t want to waste half the time available figuring out what to write. So generating a checklist of tasks or a list of scenes to write means you’ll simply pick the next one on the list and start typing.

The 16-points checklist I’ll walk you through this month will fill your brain with lots of potential ideas and energy, AND help you build a successful creative habit.

Read, Review, Choose

The first three items to establishing your routine are going to fill up your creative well.

The best way to generate creativity for WRITING is to READ. Not watch a streaming show, or movie, but to read the way another author has painted a scene, developed a character, and created tension through the narrative. If you rely only on visuals and dialogue, you will end up with a script – and while that is a perfectly valid NaNoWriMo goal – if you want to write a novel, you need to internalize how a writer used words to create the vivid images you see in your head and the emotions you feel in your heart.

READ. So, for your first several habit-forming daily sit-down hours, read a novel. Not a short story. Not nonfiction. You want to read something that will be similar in length to what you want to write.

REVIEW. When you finish the book, write a review of it. Try to put into words how the author made you see and feel the story they told. Try to do this task sitting at the desk or location where you intend to stake out your time writing during November.

CHOOSE. While the book can be any genre, I heartily recommend any books you read in October be in the genre you want to write.

A typical novel read takes 7-10 hours. So you probably could read and review 3-4 books if you take one hour a day to read. But you’re only going to read for a full hour the first week. After that first book is done, read for just 30 minutes and switch to the next task(s) on the checklist for the second half hour.

Checklist items 5-9 Brainstorming

Week 2 will be filled with brainstorming: Setting. Characters. Goals. Obstacles. So come back on October 8 for my post about that.

Checklist items 10-12

On October 15, I’ll cover how (and why) you should write your characters’ backstory as stories and not lists. That will take you through week 3, and check off items 10-12.

Checklist items 13-16

The community aspects of writing a novel for NaNoWriMo will be covered in a post on October 22 for week 4.

~ Lara