Anyone doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) will inform you that it is an insane, ridiculous, absurd idea that you TOTALLY SHOULD JOIN (in October) and they ABSOLUTELY REGRET (in November). My apartment is a mess right now, y’all.

I’ve participated in NaNoWriMo several times but never won. Until this year! 2019 shall be my first victory, hopefully of many to come.

In preparation for this momentous month, I did a few things differently in October (a.k.a. Preptober, to those of us in the NaNo know) to lay the groundwork for my glorious winning year.

Freezer crockpot meals

Ever since entering this thing called adulthood, I’ve heard the praises sung of slow cookers and frozen meal prep. I just never got around to trying this time-saving process, until now. Last month, I filled a few gallon bags with the ingredients for chicken fajitas, sloppy joes, “turkey macaroni” (which was just beef and gluten-free penne?), and meatloaf with potatoes. When meal prep day rolls around, I can just pick a bag, dump the contents in my crockpot, and leave it to cook sans my attention overnight.

There’s also a lot of canned vegetables on the side. No time for cleaning and slicing carrots with a word count on the line.

Eeeeverything deep cleaned

The kitchen. The bathroom. The laundry. The dishes. I knew the apartment would absolutely not be my priority this month. To prevent a gross explosion of total chaos, I spent a week deep-cleaning every room. (Boyfriend helped. A lot.)

Warned the boyfriend

On a related note, I made it very clear to my non-writer minion personal assistant boyfriend that said apartment chaos and non-cooking would be occurring this month. Finishing this book is a major priority for me, and NaNo is the path I have (mistakenly?) chosen to accomplish that. It’s always wise to have a sidekick/cheerleader/crying shoulder/junk food provider in this bleak month of constant mental overload. Also, we live together, and it’s just common decency to let a roommate know when you’re planning to suddenly drop all responsibilities for a month while devoting every second to your computer screen.

Read some books on writing… or tried, anyway

Now that I live in a new place, I have a new library card. I used said card to check out a few books on writing, including the ‘official’ NaNo book by the NaNoWriMo founder. It… wasn’t my kind of book. I’ve never actually finished a book about writing, so this shouldn’t have been a surprise, and his writing style just is not my type. Another writing book was DNF’ed (Did Not Finish), while the third I just never got around to opening.

Plotted all the things

This one’s kind of a given for me. Every book or project I start begins with a few thousand words in notes: character sketches, outlines, setting notes, plot holes and questions I need to figure out… NaNo is definitely no exception.

The fun stuff

Another prep task I do for every book is creating a Pinterest board and Spotify playlist. These are my lifelines when even my outline can’t bail me out of writer’s block or a dry spell — and they become ten times more important when a major deadline like NaNo is on the line.

Also! Because it’s NaNo, I made a pretty cover for my manuscript. Isn’t it gorgeous?? So proud of myself.

Super scheduled blog posts

I’ll let you in on a secret: I’m actually writing this at 1 a.m. on October 23. In fact, all my posts for November were written before midnight on Nov. 1, with the exception of my three NaNo check-in posts for the month. I’m not even sorry. Seriously, this book and this personal goal are really important to me. I’ll see you all for real again once the finish line is crossed and my poor wrists recover from all the mad typing.