Thirty days and nights of literary abandon!

Oh my, I can’t quite believe it’s that time of year – AGAIN. My how the time flies when you’re having fun. 

This year for NaNoWriMo, I’m working on my current WIP, which I already have about 20+k written on it. I need to add another 60k of words approximately, so I’m using NaNoWriMo 2013 to help me out with a little motivation. 

For those of you who don’t know what NaNoWriMo is – it’s otherwise known as (inter)National Novel Writing Month – depending on what country you live in. The aim of the game is to complete a 50,000 word novel between 1 November and 30 November. 50k is a pretty short novel, so hence why I am working on my current thriller – Tijuana Nights. 

There are a crapload of writers all around the world that get on board with this amazing challenge every year. At the moment, I think there are nearly 200,000 writers at this stage participating. When you add it all up – that’s a lot of collective words. 

So… here are some things that I always need as part of my prep: 

1. An outlined novel 😉 
2. Music to write to. Check out Spotify if you need any inspiration. It’s free, you can create playlists, follow others or artists, and generally have access to a huge range of amazing sounds. 
3. My laptop updated and ready to work! (I know that’s a basic – but jeepers – you don’t know how temperamental my system can be sometimes.) 
4. A NaNoWriMo motivational calendar pinned to my desktop! 
5. Widgets. Everyone must have widgets. 
6. A spreadsheet set up to I can track my entire novel progress (not just the 50k) do my own little pretty graph things.
7. Coffee and chocolate. Enough said. 
8. A good NaNo support team.
9. A child who will leave me alone – yeah right! 
10. And finally – for dear husband not to book me in for too many commitments in November.

And… since I have all that sorted out – I think I’m ready to get cracking into NaNoWriMo tomorrow (NZ time). I’ve got a novel to finish, and I apologise for any lack of blogging in November that may or may not happen! Wish me luck.