Yesterday, it finally hit me how close Nanowrimo is getting, and how little I have prepared for it. I’m knee deep in a revision, and I just hadn’t thought about it.

So, I settled down and made myself some bullet journal spreads. I actually started a new bullet journal insert for the project. (I’ll be keeping everything else in the old insert.) I watched a few videos, too. Apparently, everyone else is more organized than I am.

I’m trying to be more organized, more forward thinking, more… structured in general about this project. It’s been a few years since I won Nano. I keep hitting it at just the wrong phase of my creative cycle.

Nano is fun, but it’s not really sustainable as a creative lifestyle. (Particularly for a pantser like me. The revision would be overwhelming.) It’s a challenge, and it’s a kickstart that I desperately need, sometimes. But 600,000 words a year? That’s more words than most professionals are producing.

So, goals… I want to get a solid start on something I can be proud of. And I want to build habits that will make my process smoother in the long run.

So… I’m doing a little more advance plotting than I usually do.

I picked a “story structure”… and I picked it based on how it will fit Nano. Twelve segments for two characters each? That sounds a lot like my time frame. Oh. The hero’s journey, you say? Awww, shit. And then, I did something really stupid.  I decided that the second character should do something with the heroine’s journey. (Stupid, stupid me. I don’t know why I thought of the two as more or less mirror images of each other. #PantserProblems.)

I was halfway done with the spread before I realized the two sides don’t quite line up.

Now, here’s the weird thing. I don’t really like the hero’s journey…. and I can’t say I like the heroine’s journey all that much better. But the challenge of putting the two of them together? That might save the whole mess. I’m actually a little shocked how incompatible they are. I mean… some over lap might be good for the continuation of the species.

It doesn’t really matter. I’m sure they’ll both be all but unrecognizable by the time I finish tearing them apart and patching them back together.