Tackling NaNoWriMo

Six days left before the the kickoff of National Novel Writing Month. I’ve finally decided how I’m going to tackle this gargantuan challenge. Since I have already plotted a couple novels, I’m using one of them as the foundation for my 50,000 words in November.

This is the plan:

I figure that, due to holidays, I will not realistically write every single day. I am going to make every effort to do that, of course, but allowing for those holiday distractions, working the Texas Book Festival, and family activities, I’m planning on a minimum of 24 good writing days. Since 50,000 words is the end goal, let’s divide that by 24 writing days, which leaves me with a daily word count goal of 2,084. Assuming 300 words per page, that comes to roughly seven double-spaced manuscript pages of output per writing day. Wow! That’s a lotta words on a lotta pages!

Oh, but it’s all the way of the universe . . . With 24 chapters of a new book already “outlined” in spreadsheets, today I’m making 24 coordinating Word files – Chapter 1 being Day 1 of NaNoWriMo, Chapter 2 being Day 2, and so on through Day 24, which will be somewhere around November 30th. In each Word file, I’ll paste the very short blurbages I’ve documented in my plotting spreadsheets, and that’s what I’ll focus on for that day’s writing.

I’m all about giving myself some leverage during the November scramble, so I want to keep my daily focus narrow. I don’t want to be worried about the novel’s bigger picture which, I fear, would only invite the specter of writer’s block to haunt me while I stretch to make my word counts. Parceling out each day’s writing with a predetermined set of plot points to write around should help me stay on track.

What’s YOUR plan tackling NaNoWriMo?