Is It Cheating If I Planned Out My Nanowrimo Novel In October?

I was just wondering if I was cheating at Nanowrimo. I didn’t start writing until November 1, and have been writing every day and only counting the words for that day, but I spent October planning the novel. Is that acceptable? I don’t know how this is supposed to work exactly.

I tend to plan out a novel before I write it. I spend a lot of time writing in my head, and then I sketch out how things are supposed to go. It’s kind of like an outline, except a lot more free form. I sketch out the general idea of who is doing what when, the general arc and all that, and then a list of the individual parts and what happens in each. Character sketches and such. Only about 18 pages of a moleskin notebook.

Still, can you do that for Nanowrimo? Are you supposed to start fresh on day 1, or can you plan like I did?

I suppose I don’t really care. This is just an excuse to get a draft of a novel I’ve been thinking about on paper, and I wanted to do it once just to say that I did it. I’m not a huge Nanowrimo devotee other than that. It doesn’t really matter if I cheated by planning ahead of time.

Still, did I?