Only a couple of weeks until NaNoWriMo begins. Coffee shops across the nation will notice a huge uptick in caffeine-infused drink sales. People will work on developing carpal tunnel. They’ll gather together in a huge social meeting just to ignore each other and poke on Facebook and get in a little bit of writing.

All kidding aside, now is the time to get your act in gear, assuming you’re joining in on the fun. Get your outline polished, get your character development finalized, and build your world. You won’t have time for research and development when the clock starts ticking. By getting all of the prep work out of the way now, you’ll have an easier time writing that first draft.

If you need a writing buddy, I’m Rancid_Pickle. Link up if you’re feeling lucky. I won NaNoWriMo many times, and my best showing was over 165,000 words. Of course, I was out of work and just wrote that whole month, but even with a full time job++, I almost always hit 50,000 in the third week.

Just FYI, this year I am going for two, yes two, 40,000 word novels PLUS one 20,000 novella. The novels are horror and steampunk, and the novella is bizarro. If I get bored, I’ll probably cram in a short story or nine. I’ll put up a status bar for each project on my website.

Good luck!