November novelling. NaNoWriMo. Since 2009, this November novelling event gave me the external impetus I needed to write a novel. Writing a novel in a month wrung me out but filled me up and lead to many novels and books written and published — award-winning ones, too!
But after NaNoWriMo imploded, I went looking for other external motivators for November novelling. I found trackbear last year, and it went fine. This year, fellow writers on Bluesky shared new motivators, like ProWritingAid’s NovNov and Weeknight Writers #FirstDraftFall. I liked both because they didn’t wait for November 1st but started with Preptober — prepping in October for writing in November.
I’d planned on prepping in September and October. But September went by and the first few days of October seemed to be doing the same. I badly needed external motivators to kick me in the butt and get going with plotting my novel in Plottr!
It’s not like I haven’t been thinking about, reading background for, sketching out ideas in my ReMarkable for novel three of The Q’Zam’Ta Trilogy for ove a year now. But it was all chaos in my head.
Every morning I’d awaken to my mind writing a scene. Or I’d read an audiobook on my walk about the climate crisis and get even more enraged at Prime Minister Carney dialling back the clock — and my meagre income — on climate action through cancelling the carbon fee rebate. It was never a tax. Eighty percent of Canadians got back from the government more than what the carbon fee added to the heavily subsidized fossil fuel price. But optics and grumbling from the well heeled must be heeded, eh?
Anyway, fodder for my novel, which will take place 9,000 years from now with 8C of global warming because humans today were too stupid to notice that global temperature had risen from 1C to 1.55 in less than 5 years, meaning we’re on a logarithmic accelerating course. And anyone who thinks we’ll meet the 2C target is head in sand and pot addled.
But…it makes for dramatic storytelling. And it has me pumped.
Fortunately, ProWritingAid’s two prepping webinars got me started typing furiously in Plottr as I worked out my worldbuilding of Toronto nine centuries from now. It got me emailing and reading up more on technology possiblities. And #FirstDraftFall on Bluesky reminded me I’m not alone.
And then I woke up to this post on Bluesky.
To say I was excited is an understatement.
I’m excited for #NaNoWriMo again! Chris and the rest of the volunteers have refocused on the joy of writing with a great resources page (except they’re missing @plottr.com ! how can one plot in #Preptober sans plotting software‽) Love they linked to Errol’s vid: youtu.be/FbIZK-UWtyM?… 😄😊
— Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy (@shireenj.bsky.social) October 13, 2025 at 8:02 AM
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I’m so happy that Chris Baty and the rest of the volunteers created NaNo 2.0 and refocused November novelling on the joy of writing!
They’re not setting up accounts or forums or anything like that. Instead, they’re a hub to foster human beings writing creative things and listing all the resources from novelling events to software that a writer — dabbler to professional — could want or need. Check out their FAQ.
Chris returning to #NaNoWriMo has fired me up!
