NaNoWriMo Boot Camp Part 1

Apologies for last week’s aborted episode. We’ll be coming back together with Nick Roberts. He’s a cool dude and he took Kasie’s BIG mistake in stride. So thanks, Nick Roberts, let us know how we can support you and promote you. See you December 2nd!

So it’s Spooky Season and we’d normally dive head first into the ghoulish stuff but it’s also the two weeks leading up to NaNoWriMo and so we’re going to run a back-to-back prep sesh for the frenzy that is NaNo.

One plug for the ghoulish stuff: Halloween night (10/31) we’ll be at the British Bulldog Pub for a Noir at the Bar event brought to you by Raegan Teller and Chris Errol Maw of “Words and Wine” notoriety. The readers are Bonnie Stanard, Cathy Blake, Irene Stern, Kasie Whitener, AJ Brown, Paula Benson, Raegan Teller, and Phil Lenski. The program begins at 6 p.m. but Kasie should be there by about 5:30 if ya’ll wanna come have a pint.

So let’s break down this NaNoWriMo thing. What is it? National Novel Writing Month began in 1999 as a challenge to write 50,000 words in 30 days. Get their origin story here. They’re a non-profit of volunteers supporting writers and would-be authors and claim to have had a hand in books like Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus and Marisa Meyer’s Cinder – both kick-ass novels. Highly recommend.

In any case, it requires that participants create a profile online and then climb into the driver’s seat and start pumping out the words. And in Rex’s opinion deliver a steaming hot pile of garbage in thirty days. I’m not going to disagree since my first NaNo project is the vampire novel I’m still re-writing six years later.

Last year 51,670 participants completed the challenge. So imagine all those authors working through revisions and eventually querying and publishing those books. That’s a LOT of books!

More importantly, the NaNo legacy is the eternal debate between the planners and the pantsers and that’s a topic we’ve taken on before in Episode 172 back in January 2022 and again earlier this year as we talked about Aging Into Plannerhood in Episode 226.

But today we’re going to compare and contrast the two as a way of delivering best practices and then next week, we’re going to share our plans for the NaNoWriMo challenge – new novels we plan to produce in November. Seriously.

If you think we’re exaggerating on how pervasive this debate is, check out this book written specifically on how to turn pantsers into planners.

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