Are you following us on Instagram? If not, you may have missed one of our latest Reels, where Kerry Evelyn walks us through how she plans to customize our free November Novel Planner. ICYMI:
Well, her ingenuity inspired this blog post! Typically, I will use the November Novel Planner how it prints, or only use the daily planning pages if I’m using a digital system to keep my head on straight that quarter. But Kerry opened my eyes to just how many ways you can make these pages work for you, and I’m all too happy to share Kerry’s ideas here along with a few suggestions of my own.
1. Rearrange the pages.
As it’s presented, you’ll find that our November Novel Planner has 30 daily planning pages, then a set of weekly planning pages, and so on. You might find that it is easiest to print out all the pages, all at once, and stick them in a binder. That’s what I’ve done for a couple of years.
But, while we feel that all of these page types could be useful to most writers, don’t let us tell you what order those pages should go in! Kerry, for example, has taken a more traditional planner approach by starting with a weekly planner in the front to give her a glimpse of what’s ahead, then setting up a week’s worth of daily planning pages, and repeating that pattern throughout the month.
It’s all about what works best for your brain.
2. Print out exactly what you need.
Anyone who reads Kerry’s books knows she has a huge cast of characters who like to make delightful, unexpected reappearances. Naturally, that means she’s going to need to print out a lot more character pages to keep everyone straight.
But maybe this is your first book, or you’re not planning to juggle a ton of characters. Maybe, instead, you’re a plot-driven writer, and you want to make sure your outline is as detailed as you can get it before you start writing to ensure you never get lost in the subplots. Then you’ll want extra outline pages, and you may only need a single character page.
See where I’m going with this? You don’t have to print out exactly the number of pages we give you—you should print out what you need!
3. Resize to fit your life.
The November Novel Planner is sized to fit U.S. letter size paper—i.e., the pages are eleven inches tall and eight and a half inches wide. But who says you have to keep them that way?
Kerry has resized her pages. She’s printed them two to a (landscape-oriented) page such that she can fold the papers to create a booklet, which was her original plan. (After folding them, she decided what she really needs is a binder. She loves her binders!)
4. Type instead of handwrite.
Is handwriting difficult for you, whatever the reason? Do you prefer to journal and track your progress digitally? Are you certain you would have a difficult time getting everything you want to include on the page with your style of handwriting?
If either of those questions is a yes for you, you might want to try typing into our novel planner. You can do this by using a free, online PDF editor like PDFEscape. We all know I love Google, so of course I will recommend using Google Slides to add text.
Even if you do plan on tracking your word count, et cetera by hand, you might find it useful to add images anyway—faces to help your visualize your characters, family trees you’ve created on Canva Whiteboard, maps of your fantasy world or invented small town, or whatever you want to have on paper and easy to reference in case your Wi-Fi gives you trouble.
5. Hope for the best, but plan for the worst. (Or, spread the love!)
Are you the kind of writer who loves to attend your local NaNoWriMo write-ins, or maybe just loves to write outside of your home? Then you might thank yourself later for printing extra copies of the current day’s daily planning page.
Coffee spills. Pens explode. Our hand decides to write words out of order. If you are like me and get frustrated when these things happen, save yourself the heart attack and just print a few back-ups!
And, hey, if you end up not needing them, maybe you could give one to a writer who wonders aloud where you got something like that. Just be sure to tell them where you got it!
Feeling inspired? Join Kerry Evelyn and scores of other writers in downloading our free November Novel Planner!
Now is the best time to do it to because you’ll also get a free printable NaNoWriMo calendar. It’s the perfect size for sticking on your fridge as a daily reminder to get your words in—and perhaps as a daily reminder for family or roommates that you’re novelling all November long!
