Nanowrimo 2019 Has Officially Kicked Off!

So, Nanowrimo.org relaunched today with a beautiful, eye-catching design and updated features. It has me jazzed up all over again for November and this year's 50,000 word writing challenge! I can not wait!

The best part about the website being up and ready to go is that Wrimos can publicly announce their 2019 projects. This makes everything feel official and I immediately logged on and announced my 2019 project, tentatively titled: Just Another Ghost Story. Here is the synopsis as it stands right now:

When Janelle Carmen starts as an intern on the ironically popular paranormal investigation television show Paranormal Pace, she thought she was getting a fun taste of her future career in television. Instead, Janelle finds herself surrounded by a cast and crew who fake their paranormal findings for ratings and are not at all who they seem.

So what happens when this group of frauds comes up against an actual paranormal entity, one hellbent on destruction and pain? Can they band together and prove themselves capable of battling the forces of the supernatural realm head on? Or is Janelle on her own to save her friend?

I changed my mind about the vampire story and am instead going ahead with this story. It's been floating around in my mind for a while now and a recent visit to a local 'haunted' place got my gears turning for this story to be my 2019 Nanowrimo project. 

I have been working hard preparing for November 1st. I've set aside an hour every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evening to write/research. I've got writing topics chosen so that even if I feel like my creative juices are not flowing, I can just pick a topic and go. I did this last year for preparation and it worked really well. 

I've also been reading some books on the craft of writing. This also helps me to get in the spirit of Nanowrimo. I read Chris Baty's No Plot? No Problem and I found it very inspiring and helpful. Baty did found Nanowrimo, after all, surely his text is the definitive preparation guide, right? I encourage seasoned Wrimos to give it a glance through and anyone thinking about doing Nanowrimo and have thought themselves incapable. Baty does a great job of making sure you know how to go about it and defeat those negative demons. 

I am almost finished with Nancy Kress' Character, Emotion, and Viewpoint, a book in the "Write Great Fiction" series. This book has helped me tremendously. I love all the exercises throughout the book, it really has me thinking and re-evaluating the way I write. Editing my 2018 Nanowrimo project is going even better having read this text. I highly recommend it and Plot & Structure which I read last year.

My next writing craft book to tackle is Save the Cat! Writes a Novel and a book on writing in the horror genre graciously gifted to my by a new writing friend. Hopefully I can get through those before November and I will be as prepared as I could possibly be to win my second Nanowrimo in a row!

I am planning on blogging in more depth about my planning and preparation process, time allowing. So stay tuned for that!