It’s 9:04pm on October 31st, which means NaNoWriMo begins for me in under three hours. This will be my 7th year doing NaNo, and hopefully my 5th win. I have been mostly taking the day off from prep, aside from a few brief notes written this morning. I watched a few episodes of ER after work (I’m about halfway through season 3 at the moment). I’m debating whether or not I’ll change my novel idea last minute. Maybe I should skim through my notebook one more time, see if there is anything there sparking my attention and imagination more than the novel I’ve been planning on doing so far?

Well, if you’ve read my previous posts, you know that I’m actually on my second idea already, so if I switch again this will be number 3. I LOVE THIS! The is almost kinetic in October. There are a zillion ways November could go. I could write anything. I haven’t started yet, and it’s fun to think about all the wonderful novel ideas I could choose from.

The important thing now is to prepare for midnight. So what’s in my “noveling kit,” you wonder? It’s mostly the same from year to year, with minor changes. Here’s what I’m working with this time:

• My pink Dell laptop, of course, which is covered in stickers – NaNo stickers, but also smiley faces and butterflies and flowers. It’s very girly, and very ME.
• I started using WriteWayPro last year for NaNo, and I will never go back. It’s so easy to write and rearrange scenes and chapters, and to print out a new outline after moving things around.
• Pandora.com customized music stations. If I stick with my current (second) novel idea, it’s disco music all the way.
• mIRC, signed into my regional ChatNaNo chat room. Hopefully other local wrimos will join me, otherwise I’ll use a generic NaNoWriMo chat room.
• A notebook to write down my noveling ideas – characters, plot, anything that comes to me that I need to write later… everything that passes through my brain that is related to my novel goes into the book.
• Usually after the writing gets started, I find a few pictures of my characters and settings and add them to my notebook in scrapbook fashion.
• Twitter and my blog! I like to write about how my writing is going. 🙂
• Peanut M&Ms, which I often eat as a sort of trail mix with pretzels. I am sadly out of pretzels at the moment, but I might air pop a big bowl of popcorn tonight.