My NaNoWriMo 2013 Survival Kit

Happy Thursday, good people of the blogosphere! Today, I'm talking about NaNoWriMo and what I do to survive a month of writing when I need to crank out 50k plus words and make Thanksgiving dinner. Grab those pens and notebooks and let's get going!

If you don't know what NaNoWriMo is, what planet do you live on? Seriously, if you're an author and you haven't heard of NaNo, you need some edumacation. Click here to find out more!

Now, about that survival kit...

I have:

• fingernail clippers (you never know when you're gonna have a hangnail)
• a fingernail file (same reason)
• pre-written blog posts for the month (self-explanatory)
• dinners planned out (some frozen already) for the whole month (and groceries bought to fill the menu)
• Hootsuite (my helping hand for all social media)
• an iPad (so I can keep up with other commitments when I'm not writing)
• a warning sign on the door (so people won't be knocking while I'm trying to write)
• a blanket (for those freezing cold days)
• an outline of my novel (hey, I want to jump right in with both feet)
• a cover designed for my novel (why not get that out of the way now? Winner below!)
• a plan to take every weekend and three weekdays off during the month which leaves me 18 writing days
• my super awesome writing schedule which outlines how much time I have to dink around with other things that includes solid time slots each day to write no less than 3k words in order to meet my goal of 50k (I had 6k word days last year)
• my family on high alert
• a ton of amazing writing buddies

What I need now is an emergency button! When I'm stuck or overwhelmed, I need something I can push that will call for help. Haha!

Here's the winning cover design for I, Zombie (image only, text may change):

Let the insanity commence!

In case you missed the special posts from this week, check out my interview with UtopYA author Tania Penn and get on over to the Mystic~Coralie release post to enter to win copies of the awesome fifth book in the series!

Are you participating in NaNo this year? What's in your survival kit?

Add me as a buddy and let's support each other! You can find me here: Jo Michaels on NaNoWriMo

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo