October Plans

National Novel Writing Month starts in November, and I am spending #preptober (October where you plan for NaNo) getting my life in order more than outlining or thinking about characters or world building for the story I'm going to write.

I got revisions on my Firebird novel back from my agent. (Possibly the penultimate round of revisions, because an editor will want another round too!)  And I'd like to have that in shape by November so I can set it aside and not have it looming.  I want to came back to it in December, read through it with fresh eyes, and then see what I missed or didn't hit hard enough or what I can do even better.  But in order to do this I have to get these revisions done.  I let my agent's notes stew for a while, then I printed the manuscript and went through it with a blue pen for stuff I could correct right that second and an orange pen with stuff I needed to come back to later, because I needed to give it some thought or doing some research or rewrite a huge section.  Then I went through and put all the notes I made on the printed out manuscript into the latest version of my novel in a Word file, changing the stuff in blue as I came to it and putting the stuff in orange in comments.  Turns out these orange things can be grouped into larger categories, from low-hanging fruit like "Find a more violent word" (in the synonyms category) and "Is it 'Forest Service' or 'Forestry Service'?" (in the quick research category) to pretty serious re-writes like "Re-do the climax" (its own category).  Then I pulled up my October white board calendar and scheduled when I was going to do these groups of revisions.  Some days I'm tackling two categories, sometimes I'm taking several days (and always including the days when my kid goes to grandma's) to do some serious rewrites.  I gave myself the weekends off because I know I don't work much on the weekends, and I knew I'd need some wiggle room in case something turned out to be way harder than I anticipated. 

Or in case my kid developed hives all over his body and was sent home from school, blowing my schedule to shreds.  That happened on Tuesday.

The other thing I'm doing is getting Season 5 of The Twenty Percent True Podcast all queued up and ready to go.  The last episode of the season will go up in November, and I don't want to have to think about it while I think about NaNo.  So I want the stories revised, the audio recorded and edited with music cues and everything by the end of the month.  This shouldn't be a problem, but I've felt pretty lazy this season.

Finally, in addition to writing a new first draft in November, I'll also be doing a podcast about National Novel Writing Month called *drum roll!*  NaNo-It-All.  My friend Jim used to have a podcast called NaNoWriPod, where he and his co-host or guests talked about their NaNo experience.  I was a guest a couple of times.  He eventually concluded the show after not winning NaNo for several years.  I want to do a similar thing, but I'm going to have a new guest come in every episode (with probably a few repeats at the end) so the show will cover different strategies and points of view along with an array of projects.  I also want to go in with an idea about what we're going to talk about, and then limit the show to around half an hour.  It's National Novel Writing Month!  No one has time to listen to an hour long podcast twice a week!

So I'm getting things set for that: scheduling guests, setting up a website. (The website looks so good!)  I need cover art for Apple Podcasts and to find a theme song.  I have a list of punny episode titles that I'm excited to use.  I need to make sure I can record with two microphones, and figure out how to record a Skype call.  I'll have a teaser trailer air sometime later this month so I can make sure Apple Podcasts and Sticher will have the show approved in time.  It's kind of a lot, but I'm also pretty excited about it.

Wish me luck doing all this while also getting the not-for-profit I work for's 2020 budget ready to go!