What’s Nanu Reemoo? (Part 3)

If you missed the previous installments of this mini-series, you can catch them here: What’s Nanu Reemoo (Part 1) and (Part 2).

If you’ve stuck with me this far, maybe I’ve convinced you to give National Novel Writing Month a try. Now what?

There are tons of blogs and articles out there talking about all the things you can or should do to “prep” for NaNoWriMo. My first year of NaNo, I’d never even heard of it until about a week before it happened. There was a pre-NaNo kickoff meeting in my region, and I missed it. If you’ve gotten this far without signing up, you’ve probably missed yours, too.

But that’s okay. It’s not November yet, right? Sure, you can prep if  you want to, but it’s not necessary. All you need is the germ of an idea and an official account on the website so you can take advantage of all the tools available to help you succeed.

So, are you ready? Go to the NaNoWriMo website and click on “sign up” on the top right corner of the page. Choose a username, fill in your email address, and add a password. Scroll down to your timezone, then click “sign up.”

There you go. It’s official! Now you have a dashboard. From there, you can go to “My NaNoWriMo” and enter as much or as little information about you and your book as you like. It’s fun to play with, and I found with my very first NaNo that putting a title, genre, and a few sentences about the book I was about to write really made it real. This is also where you’ll put your word count in every day. Seeing that graph line go up through the weeks gives an enormous sense of accomplishment.

The next section is the Forums. Go ahead. Check them out. Read about the different stories people are writing, get ideas for  your novel, make some friends, learn about how it all works, or just lurk (like I do) and be nosy.

The third tab is Fun Stuff. All kinds of stuff is in there for you to discover. Go look. Explore. Play. I’m not going over everything and ruining the surprises for you. In fact, check out all the tabs, which also include More from NaNo, Store, and Donate. They all kind of go hand in hand. There are a bunch of awesome programs these people do, all for free. They’ve got some great stuff in their store, which helps them pay for their overhead, and donating to the cause is also a great way to say “Thank you” for all the stuff they do. I won’t harp on it, but if you do NaNo and get something out of it, please consider tossing a little monetary thanks back at them, okay?

I skipped over what I consider the most important tab. In my opinion, it’s the key to success in this crazy endeavor. If you do nothing else to prepare, do this one thing. Click on the NaNo Near You tab. Use the filter to look for your town or state and find the closet region. Add yourself to that group and go immediately to the forum for your new region and introduce yourself.

This is your new family for the duration of the month. Stick with them. Go to the write-ins if they have them. Add them as friends on your account. Ask questions, be supportive, cry out for help if you get stuck.

And if your group sucks? My region does not. We welcome people who don’t have regions of their own. We’ve had members move away to far off places and still stick with our region on the forum. So, if you need a family for support, you can claim “USA :: Kansas :: Lawrence“ as your home. Introduce yourself. Tell us I sent you. We’ll be there for you.

Oh, and one more thing. Feel free to add me (rlwohler) as a friend on your account. We’ll keep each other honest.

Together, we will Write All of the Words.

See you real soon!