Preptober / NaNo Prep
It’s getting to that time of year again. The time when I get really stressed out because I haven’t pinned down what project I want to work on for NaNoWriMo this year… I ended up not doing it last year, because I didn’t feel that I had the time, but I really missed it so I wanted to dive back into the deep end this year. The only issue has been figuring out what to work on. I have been raffling through my old story ideas for two weeks, but nothing really caught my eye, and I didn’t want to do another year of trying to beat some semblance of structure into Flames & Illusions. I kind of burned myself out on that story to the point where I don’t really know where I want to take it anymore, so it’s been put on the backburner for the time being.
So, that left finding an entirely new idea! I eventually found one on the new NaNoWriMo forums (more on those at a later time), and now need to flesh it out into a proper plot. That is what I will be using October for. This gives me a month to flesh out the idea into something that can tell a proper story. As soon as I have gotten a bit more of a grip on the story I want to tell, I will let you know!
To help me out in this I have dedicated an entire journal for NaNo 2019! I am still figuring out what I want in it, but so far it has a word tracker for November, brainstorming pages and a doodle brainstorm spread. I will use this to do the plotting and planning on the go, as well as use it to write in during November when I’m not by my computer. Hopefully, this will help me get through the month with a bit more ease, since I will have the important parts of my planning close at hand at all times.
Bullet Journal October Setup
Speaking of journals, I finally got around to finishing up my monthly setup for October in my Bullet Journal, and I’m overall pretty happy about it. I’m trying out a few new things this month, so we’ll have to see how that goes.
I kept my cover page simple since I’m not exactly confident with drawing. A simple pumpkin and the name of the month was more than enough for me. I might decorate it with stickers of some kind at a later point (still need to order sticker paper to print the ones I want) but for now this is good.
I made my calendar rather big this time, rather than writing things up in lists, hoping that it will make it easier to get an overview. I kept with the orange theme of pumpkins and autumn and really like the way it turned out.
Okay… This page is a little bit of a mess… I decided to try out a new layout for my habit trackers, and that part I really like. But I really shouldn’t have tried to shoehorn the ‘A Sentence a Day’ list into the same spread, I really shouldn’t… It ended up looking really cluttered and I kinda don’t like looking at it… So, now I know not to do that next month.
Next up is the first weekly spread, and this is where I really get out of what I know. I have always set up the entire week in advance, but this time I decided to try out something different. I believe that this method is called a ‘running weekly’, but I might be wrong. Basically it’s when you finish one day before getting started on the next, only using the space you need for the various days. I wanted to try this out because it gives me as much or as little space as I need for that specific day, including personal notes and brainstorms. I did want a few things set up for the week though, so the first page holds my work schedule for the week, a few writing goals, a nice little quote I found and the things that I know are happening during the week. That way it’s easy to put them into their related day when I get to that.
I am going to try this out for the first week of October and see how I like it, and then decide how I want to do it for the rest of the month.
What does your October spread look like? And are you doing NaNo this year? How are you preparing?