Thanks everyone for your input on the cover art! I'll probably use that layout no matter what title I end with, then. Now to come up with a life lesson from chess...anyone have one of those?

I love the overall word war, but I've never participated in a smaller one. I'm not a very fast typer, so I doubt I could ever win one anyway, even if I were in one.

@winterlife you should try them sometime I love them though I never win (I type with one hand ) but it's still fun and it keeps me writing. Even though I didn't do Nano last year I played some of the chat word wars because I happened to be working on one of my larger books at the time

I read a NaNo book by a friend last night. Oh dear. I've read 4 from last year now (and just one from the year before) and two of them have been horrible (two wonderful. ) and this was the worst of all. One of the really bad one's was by a 16 year old girl who thinks she's a writer and plans to get published before she's 18. xD It's unfathomable to me that some people actually *cannot* write at all. It makes me feel much better about last year, and more excited for this year.
I do know the point of NaNo is not to write a good book, but I thought that everyone did anyway. xD Without even trying very hard.

Anyway, here's option one and option two. Which one do you guys like best?

I think I like the chess one best.
Oh, and I'm definitely up for small Word Wars, and NaNo teams as well. I was wondering if ya'll were going to do that.

*is suddenly very afraid to let Elanor read his NaNo book if he ever finishes it*

*enters laughing maniacally*

Public school is out on the first of November for parent-teacher conferences!!! Granted, I am a homeschooler, but I take German at the public school. That gives me A WHOLE EXTRA HOUR FOR WRITING ON THE FIRST!!!

Oh, parent-teacher conferences, I love you.

/crazily joyful rant

Have any of you ever googled "life lessons from chess"? There's a lot of deep stuff out there...

Yay! Outline is now about 41% done. That's an increase of about half over the weekend. *happy dance*

@winterlife: Heh, I love chess. 'Twas about to give you a whole bunch of little anecdotes, but it seems you found some on your own.

I'm not doing any Word Wars this year, but that's okay because I always lost anyways...

I'm taking a look at everyone's book covers, and man, they look amazing! I'd like to get something like that done for my Nano... *cough*hinthint*cough*

7 days left! How is everyone's pre-Nano prep going?

7 days left! How is everyone's pre-Nano prep going?

Before today, I would've said "sluggish." However, today I was able to outline 8 chapters of my novel. I'm planning it out loosely, but I'm at least getting a skeleton of an idea for how I want things to go. I used to be completely against outlining, but I've realized how wonderful it can be. It's like writing my story in advance. Also, I got so much done when I brought my notebook outside to outline. The autumn air was refreshing.

Question to everyone: are you outlining, or are you going to completely make things up? What is the reason behind your method of choice?

...are you outlining, or are you going to completely make things up? What is the reason behind your method of choice?

I guess I'm somewhere in the middle. I don't have a formal, strict outline, but I have a pretty good idea of the flow of main events.

In October (or even earlier sometimes), I'll begin a list of notes when I get inspiration about main events or little vignettes that would add to the story, but there's no formal outline. Like Mountie's observation about outlining, this list of goodies is like writing the story in advance, and usually gives me a great jump start that first week of November.

I always outline. I lost the first year because I started late and wasn't able to come up with a plot and outline ahead of time.

So now, I have a chronological bullet-pointed list that looks something like this:

-Boy likes his pet dog
-Dog dies
-Boy is mad
-Boy runs away from home
-Dog is reincarnated as a bear
-Bear finds boy and eats him.

OK, that was simply terrible and awful but you get the idea. I'm constantly adding in new bullet-points as I come up with ideas. And I have random paragraphs of "what-if" questions to give me ideas when I read through them.

I don't follow my outline. I frequently rabbit-trail off of it. However, the nice thing is if I get stuck, I can look at my outline and at the next thing that needs to happen and start writing that or writing towards that. And I have an idea of how I want it to end.

My NaNo prep has been NON-EXISTENT. Egad. It doesn't help that the NaNo site is turned every whichway and I don't know where anything is anymore, whaa. I need to get working on my prep, stat....

Thanks, n_a_h! So this is a word war that last the same duration as NaNo? Wow.

I'm glad I'm not alone, Gymfan. I've only planned what time, what genre, and one name if I choose to go with the genre. I've never planned, so I have no idea how I'm going to get about this....

*buries herself in history books to research...*

I'm just outlining the basics of my plot and my character details (I'd also like to do places, objects, but I'm not sure I'll have the time... this has been a very hectic October.) My plot outline's not even Chapter by chapter, which could cause a few problems later.

Not sure if you "need to know", but I see everyone else posting it, so;
I am interested in doing word wars as well!

@winterlife: Heh, I love chess. 'Twas about to give you a whole bunch of little anecdotes, but it seems you found some on your own.

You're welcome to PM them to me! I'd love as many as you have I have my main one already, but I wouldn't mind having other ones to supplement it.

For my planning, I basically go through the story in my mind and write down all my ideas. After a couple of days, I look at my notes and find where the holes in my plot or flow are, and address those. So it's nice and scrambled, but at least it's written down.