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Ascent The Soyuz TMA-01M rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday, Oct. 8, 2010 carrying Expedition 25 Soyuz Commander Alexander Kaleri of Russia, NASA Flight Engineer Scott J. Kelly and Russian Flight Engineer Oleg Skripochka to the International Space Station.

NaNoWriMo is coming. If you are in the writing community at all it is pretty hard to miss that fact.  I know lots of authors and want-to-be-authors are scrambling to clear their schedules for all of November.  Trying to figure out how to bake a turkey while never leaving their keyboard, making sure that that your word count does not end up in the stuffing.

Whether you you think NaNoWrimo is a useful tool for getting you novel out, or something that is just for first time authors, this year you are going to take the plunge and try NaNo out.  My question is about planning.  How much planning are you going to do?

For me planning is almost a futile effort. I can plan until I am blue in the face (or more accurately, until my fingers bleed) but after step one I don’t stick to the plan.  For me even modifying the plan as I go does not work, believe me I have tried.   However, I know that I am not the norm, and that there are plenty of planning methods and tools out there.

Do you do any planning at all, or are you like me and just hope that your story does not end up in the mashed potatoes?

If you do plan, how much planning are you going to do?

When you are planning what tools do you use?  Outlines, the snowflake method,  scrivener, character bios, story bibles,  or some other tools?

Let us know what you do.

Image Credit: NASA/Carla Cioffi

Tags: author, from the editor, nanowrimo, publishing, writing