Prepping for Preptober

It’s that time of year again - Nano season is upon us.

Now that it is officially preptober, I am in full writing mode, getting my character sheets together and making sure my outline is ready.

I had such success with the Write 50k in 30 Days accountability program last year that I am going to be doing it again this year. Fortunately, the program is a lifetime membership. However, this year, the program has undergone some dramatic changes.

Last year, two new videos with extra information to help you find a good writing routine were added. This year, the whole program is being restructured into a more self-guided version. Kristen Martin (the writer who created the materials and runs the program) recently had a baby. Because newborn sleep schedules are notoriously unreliable, she couldn’t schedule live streams and check-ins like she did last year. Instead, she uploaded the walkthroughs of the workbook that she did live last year, so you can watch them (or rewatch them) as needed. She also put the live write-ins from the first and second years on the courses page.

Most of this material was available through the Facebook group before because she had saved old livestreams for people to rewatch there. However, they were difficult to find, didn’t always stream smoothly, and hadn’t been edited as they are now. The prep-talk videos have also been moved to the course page.

As far as I can tell, the only new thing that was added to the course was the video at the start that walks you through the course and how to follow along on your own.

I’m glad I went through the course before and that I took the time in September to scroll through the course page to see what all was there before things kicked off. The resources that are available all seem to be organised in the order that Kristen thinks they will be useful. This means that things like “bonus resources” are now in the middle of the page when they used to be at the end. This was a little confusing because the bonus video about editing your novel is one that I think would make sense to go to at the end of the course when you have successfully completed a draft and not in the middle as it currently is. For a moment, I thought that nothing had been added to the page and that I was going to have to hunt through the FB group to find the older lives.

There are still set to be prizes and check-ins, so the part of the course I found the most helpful is still very much a part of this.

Honestly, I think these changes give the course more value overall because now it’s much more helpful if you want to start writing when it’s not NaNoWriMo.

I live in hope that this course will be something I continue to use and learn from and that it wasn’t something that was only really useful once.

I haven’t watched any of the videos or skipped ahead, so I’ll have to let you know what I think of these changes at the end.

But I can’t tell you how excited I am to jump back into a more structured writing schedule when it comes to my passion projects.

It all kicks off tomorrow.

Wish me luck.