[ZenKitty]

Soon it will be that time of year when around 400,000 people around the world embark upon writing a 50,000 word novel in the month of November.

Come hangout and share ideas, strategies, prompts and just generally have fun.

[ZenKitty]

How are you all doing with your preparation?

I'm feeling incredibly uninspired and all of my energy has been going into planning events for NaNo and finding donors for prizes at our big all day write ins. (Yes, I'm a Municipal Liaison and this becomes my part time unpaid job starting in mid-September.)

So far, I'm thinking about following the superhero theme and writing a story about the housekeeper of a bumbling hero. She helps him be great when she's really the superhero. It's the vaguest of ideas, but at least it's something. Hopefully I'll be able to flesh it out a little bit more before the 1st.

[Kaderin Triste]

So, I am totally not super prepared. I have my main characters, general theme, and all that, but I still need an enemy/dark force for my characters to battle/defeat. But I'm really just going for something silly/cute.

[ZenKitty]

Silly and cute is fun to write. I'm hoping mine is like that too as I'm only writing this year as practice and for fun instead of writing something I hope to publish one day.

We had an editor come last week and present a NaNo Prep workshop. She had us brainstorm ideas by:

1. writing down two words that described our story or character
2. break each of those words into 2 related words
3. break each of those words into 2 more related words for a total of 8
4. If you want, break each of those down into 2 more related words - 16 total words
5. Combine 2 different words until you find pairs that inspire you
6. Free write about those 2 words for 3 minutes and see what you get.

It was a fun exercise and it helped to flesh out my main character a little bit.

[Kaderin Triste]

Yeah...mine will mainly be practice too. I haven't written seriously in years and, honestly, I no longer hold onto the delusion that I'll ever be published. (No really, this isn't a "pity me" or "encourage me", I have been writing off and on for over 10 years, and always lose my story after 1-2 pages usually.)
But I want to find the fun in writing again.
One of my friends suggested I write children's books, so maybe this is a good way to start enjoying writing again.

[ZenKitty]

Writing children's books is a great way to start enjoying writing again. I took a free Coursera course on writing children's books and it is a lot of fun.

I've only attempted it once, but that one will be revised and then I'll have my artistic niece do art for it and I'll print off enough for my family. It's a kid's story based upon a way my father-in-law kept my husband occupied when they cut down their Christmas trees. ;)