OctoPrep Reasoning

Autumn. The leaves change colors. People return to school. Vacations slow down. And every year from 1999 to 2024, writers locked themselves in their rooms and chained themselves to their computers to write the next great novel of at least fifty thousand words.

The reward? Missed time with family. Stress. Writing hurriedly when their boss wasn’t looking over their shoulders. And maybe that great novel. A lot of recent popular books were started as NaNo books. But just a couple of years ago, there were some rumbles in the community.

What was NaNo?

NaNo or NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month was begun in 1999. For many, many years people around the world spent the month of November trying to write a fifty thousand word novel. There was a website, write-ins, forums, etc to support those writers.

In addition, there were groups that were rebel NaNoers and mini-NaNoers that set other word counts or encouraged other writing.

In recent years, there has been controversy about the actual NaNo group and the actual site has now closed. Despite this, many people are still meeting with their groups or competing in NaNo this year. There just isn’t an official site.

What is OctoPrep?

OctoPrep is the invention of a friend of mine on the writing site we both belong to. It’s thirty-one days of preparing to write your novel with Sundays as rest days. In addition, you are only required to spend fifteen minutes per assignment so it allows you to decide how much work you put into each assignment.

During the month, writers follow the directions given by the leaders to prepare the novel they are planning to write in November. You build your characters, your settings, plot, and even what market you think your novel fits. Three of the days are devoted to outlining the novel so by the end of the month, you should have a good plan. It helps when you actually sit down to write the novel to have all of those things plotted out.

If you officially participate in OctoPrep on the site, you can win awards and onsite money. Mostly I do it for the satisfaction of completing it and getting my information prepared for writing.

Why do it?

I have never officially participated in NaNo, but I’ve done OctoPrep for years. I’ve even used the guidelines to work on prepping novels during the rest of the year. The group has grown exponentially since the first year and now the founder has a lot of help running it.

It helps to complete the assignments because it allows you to sit and think about all the minutia of the novel without being distracted by writing the actual book.

What am I doing?

I actually prepared two novels during OctoPrep this year. I’ve never done that before and it was a bit more stressful than I expected, but I also think it helped me. I struggle to focus on just one writing project at a time so now I have two different ones to focus on as I go forward.

For November, I have a few assignments I didn’t complete to my satisfaction so I will be finishing those up. I am also planning to put words on both of my novels. I have a goal of fifteen thousand for the month, which means five hundred words a day. My plan is to put five thousand words on each novel and also five thousand on other projects.

I have eight stories that help set the scene for the novels and I’m planning to share them as I finish them. I hope you enjoy them. And if you have any questions about OctoPrep, please let me know.

Love by the Boo-kshelves

Protagonist Background Story

Antagonist Background Story

Setting Description

Plot Background Story

Blood Oath

Protagonist Background Story

Antagonist Background Story

Setting Description

Plot Background Story