With just a little over a week of preparation for NaNoWriMo, today seemed to be a great time for another NaNo Prep Friday. The biggest thing I have been doing to get ready is jotting down ideas and generally brainstorming on *what* I actually want to write about. I have a synopsis, some notes, a couple of characters, and a (very) rough outline.

Other thing I have been working on myself is seeing what other folks use for their process.  As November gets closer, quite a few writing blogs have posts of some sort relating to NaNoWriMo.  Over on The WriteRunner for example, Andrew had a great post on character development.  Andrew has a number of great NaNo related posts, so certainly worth checking out!  He also has some good posts on plot development and plot structure.

Jane over on Writers Digest also had a good post.  While not a NaNo’er herself, she did a good writeup with suggestions and links to four other articles that might be of use to folks.  Take a look around – there are a number of great articles out there with useful advice.  Don’t forget to check out the forums too of course.  A lot of tips and suggestions.  Seeing how other folks do things may help.  The key is to not get discouraged.

Next to last, I am working on tweaking my writing setup this year.  I am using FreeMind to work on the plot structure and simple text files to hold notes.  As soon as the beta for Scrivener for Windows is out, I will start migrating into that application and getting things organized.  That way I can hit the ground running on November 1st.

Last but certainly not least, I have been collecting desktop Wallpapers and whatnot that I can use during the month.  There is a whole thread on NaNo Wallpapers for 2010.  A lot of great ones in there. A few good examples….

(75k and 100k versions are available as well.)

(Some great Harry Potter variations.  Follow the thread for different sizes.)

(A few versions of this one, but I love it.  Helps that I have a mug like that on my desk.)

As a stats junky (it is either the geek in my or I do way to much reporting at my day job), I also like to track my writing status outside of NaNo.  This thread on the forums has a few different options for tracking your NaNo progress.  The various spreadsheets folks have made allow you to do a little more in depth analysis of how your writing is going etc.

Basic rule is – whatever helps keep you going and inspires you.  Have fun and good luck!

I wrote about the Writing Excuses podcast last month. I have selected my favorite one from Septembers episodes and will be sharing it with you.

I have gone back and forth whether to post this or not. It is rough writing meant more as practice than publishable material. So I don’t have the full text posted at the moment, but I probably will in the future. So keep an eye out.

Below are the different prompts from September.

Writing Prompt:

From Episode 5.1 on 9/07/10: Brandon, Dan, Howard, and Producer Jordo all walk through a room, and each of us sees the room differently.

From Episode 5.2 on 9/12/10: A physical attribute that in some way influences the character’s religion

From Episode 5.3 on 9/19/10: The main character has a secret. Write from that character’s point of view, but keep the secret from the reader

From Episode 5.4 on 9/26/10: “I have coated my left hand with magical ink.”

Now all of these were interesting actually. The most entertaining to work with was the last one and magical ink. The most difficult, so probably most important, one was from the 19th. I should say initially I found this one difficult. After some pondering and a couple of rough starts it actually went pretty well. The realization that a character isn’t going to discuss the secret with himself very often made it easier. The goal here is to have the secret influence the characters monolog/action, but not outright state the secret.

In mine I had a character who their secret was that they were color blind. They didn’t like it to be known. So while writing a scene with this, the character got out of simple things such as having to drive by making different excuses. It wasn’t the best, but it worked to practice the concept.

Pimp my Novel has been a great discovery of mine.  I always find interesting posts popping up in Google Reader from that site.

This morning is no exception.  It is actually a guest post on the blog, but it is well written and worth checking out.  The topic is “Books on Writing” and it is split into two sections: Before [still writing your novel] and After [finishing your novel.]  If you are a writer or striving to go further with your writing (as I am) then stop over and check out this post.  Once you are finished, poke around the site.  Look at previous articles and see if the site is of interest to you.  (I suspect it will be.)  If so – be sure to subscribe to the feed.  It is frequently updated with all sorts of good posts.

Some of the recommendations given in this mornings article I have seen or read before, others are new to me and have now joined my list of resources to check out.  Either way it is a post worth going through.  Randy Susan Meyers (the guest author) clearly did her homework for the post.

I have started a resources page. There are a number of online resources I have found interesting or useful that I wanted to share. They are a mix of literary sites, publishers, agent blogs, author blogs, and more. Wow – there is a lot of information about the industry out there.

So that is why I started a page for these links as opposed to putting them all in a single post. However, I will list a few of my favorite ones below.

Agent Blogs: Nathan Bransford. Recently redid his site and added forums. A *lot* of information can be found on his site relating to getting published and the industry in general. The new forums have sections for industry discussion, Query Letter assistance, and much more. Hands down the best publishing industry resource I have found.

Author Blogs: Patrick Rothfuss and Brandon Sanderson. If you have read any of their works, follow them on their blogs. I enjoy reading both. Patrick is the author of one of the best debut fantasy novels I have read in a long time. Name of the Wind is a book I highly recommend. (Still waiting for book two Pat!  Though now working on my own I am inclined to give a bit more slack in the sequel area.) Brandon wrote the incredible Mistborn trilogy along with being selected to finish Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series.

There are *many* other sites I have found and subscribed to their news feeds. Such sites as Fantasy Book Critic, the NaNoWriMo blog, and Query Shark all have a different purpose but make for an informative (and often also enjoyable) read.

Check out the page and see if there are any you like.  As it says on the page, feel free to send me any additional sites you think might add to this list.  I am sure there are others I don’t yet know about!