Uh Oh, 2 days to NaNo

So I had all these plans.  Where did they go?  I was going to go do a giant mind map of my entire novel and have this great big printout maybe that I could hang on my wall as a testament to my brilliance and creative genius.  And then I did other things.

So now, here we are, at cram time.  It is somewhat like the last night before the big exam.  No time left to study for real, so all you do have is time for the useless memorization that you will forget twelve minutes after you leave the exam.  In terms of NaNoWriMo, this last minute "oops, I forgot to plan" frenzy consists of the following wastes of time that could be planning activities:

• Brainstorming/Doing a Mind Map - OK, I actually AM doing this.  I have my "Novel Mind Map" that I created, and am plugging in my thoughts to FreeMind as I come across them.
• Reading Nathan Bransford's NaNoWriMo Boot Camp series - Actually, while I thought this would be a time-suck (as I often start reading post after post on his blog as well as comments), I found the articles to be helpful, and I quickly Alt+Tabbed back over to my FreeMind and added a few nodes to a character because of his post.
• Browsing the forums at NaNoWriMo.org - OK, this is pretty much a total time suck right now.  It will also suck in hours, nay days, of my time during November as well.  C'est la vie.
• Scoping Twitter - Hey, there are NaNoWriMo articles being posted on there!  In fact, I am sure THIS one will be posted on there!  And come November, there will be Word Sprints to do!
• Re-Reading "Plotting Made Easy" and "Dramatica Theory Book - Guide to Objective Characters."  These two articles give a very great breakdown on how to structure your characters to create a well balanced cast of archetypes, as well as how the story arc should progress.  Ultimately, I don't know if I know where my characters will end up, but I do know about how long it needs to take them to get there.
• Writing blog posts.  Well, I am.
• Challenging people to do NaNoWriMo.  Come on, what are you?  If I can do it, you can do it.
• Debating whether to download the beta of Scrivener for Windows, or to stick with WriteMonkey this year.  Leaning towards Scrivener.  But it's beta so I don't know.  Would be awful if it didn't save or something.

Anyway, that's my big pile o plan.  You gonna write a novel this year?

Either way, you can expect random updates from me as November moves along.  Now, where did I put that mind map?

Catch you later.