#Preptober During a Pandemic: Day 1

Welcome to Roxy's Pandemic Preptober! 

Today is embracing the idea of being a NaNo rebel. National Novel Writing Month is set up as a goal of writing a complete 50,000 word novel in the month of November. 

I'm not doing that. And guess what? You don't have to either. There have always been "rebel" writers in NaNoWriMo. These people use the community to tap into the supportive vibe, but they don't follow the rules to get their win.

My goal for today is to decide what a reasonable number of words to write in November. Would I love to write 50k? Sure. Is it realistic for me right now? 

Fuuuuuuuuck NO.

Today I'm downloading the graphic calendar provided on the NaNoWriMo Website. (Go HERE to get yours) I'm going to be marking this stuff up on my iPad Goodnotes app, but you could use your own calendar, print out the image from NaNo, or just scribble on a piece of paper.

My steps for doing this are simple.

1. Mark out all days where I won't be writing. 
NaNo suggests a daily writing habit, but this isn't realistic for me this year. While I don't have ANYTHING to do that is definite at this point (Thanks, Covid-19), I do know that I need to work in some breaks for myself. So I'm going to plan in some breaks based on holidays, birthdays, and if I have nothing going on, I'm still going to mark out at least one day of the week for some time off.

2. Break out the calculator.
I'm going to sit down with my calculator and start cranking out the math. Once I have the basic number of days I'll be writing, I'm going to pick different milestone numbers (30k, 40k, 50k) and divide by the number of days I have. What I'll be trying to remember is that I'm rusty. A year or two ago, 2500 words per day was realistic. Now? I am thinking 1k-1500 is more my speed. 

3. Post the goal in ink.
After I get my number I'm going to put it on my calendar. In ink. But I'm not going to put a number every day. What I'm going to mark this year is a weekly goal. I might put my daily goal on a post-it and pin it above where I'll be writing. I might not. It's 2020. Fuck it.

What are you going to set as your goal for November? Are you going to write during November? Or are you going to mainline wine and pray for the end of the year to come faster? I'd love to hear about your plans.

​~Roxy