Trinity here. So, for NaNoWriMo this year, I believe I'll be working on my baby. My precious. My firstborn. Aouthentica. (Previously known as Milliayn, or Village of Milliayn.)
Now, technically, when you do NaNoWriMo, you're supposed to start on an entirely new novel. To say I haven't written anything for Aouthentica before would be a grossly exaggerated lie. In fact, I've filled (yes, filled!) three notebooks and a binder with Aouthentica stuff, but I've tossed it all out (not literally). I'm currently working on plotting the whole thing out first, and THEN writing it all down. A novel idea for me.
(Get it? Novel... idea? I'm writing a novel and I... Nevermind. It's late. Ignore it.)
Also, as you can see in my fourth and most recent notebook, I try and mark what date and time I start a notebook for future reference, and then when I get to the end, I mark what date and time I finished it. My first one I finished on November 4th, 2009 and it took about 3 months to fill. My second was started November 4th, 2009 and I finished it on April 19th, 2011. So, like two years. The third "assumed duty" on March 19th, 2011 and was "retired" July 30th, 2012. The fourth and (currently) last one assumed duty on July 30th, 2012 as well. And I still haven't finished it. Some of that I credit to using a huge binder in an effort to organize everything better, but then I couldn't carry it around, so my writing slowed down.
Anyway.
Here's how I'm plotting it out.
First, I wrote down all the major events I could think of that I wanted to happen, as well as a few not-so-major-but-still-important ones, and colored a square next to them to sort them with my nifty colored pens. Blue means I'm not sure if the even will stay in the story. Red means there's a death. Purple means that it's an important part that has to go in somewhere. Green means I'm not exactly sure how that event will play out, or if it's important.
Then, I wrote down all the events on index cards cut in half, still color coded. Well, actually I wrote them on whole index cards, but then they wouldn't all fit, so I bought a whole new package of index cards, forgetting about the package at home in the desk, and cut them all in half and rewrote everything.
I stuck them on my bulletin board, with semi color-coded tacks. Basically, red means death. Otherwise, it's kind of a free-for-all. Underneath the deaths I put a little note for the event that it's linked to.
Since it's written in a three plot lines twined together type style, I have three lines of plot so I can plan out what happens when. Deaths go on the very top and the very bottom. The top left corner is actually a stack of prologue events that I stuck all together, because, again, I didn't have enough room. I haven't finished plotting it to the end yet (still working on that...), but at least I've got all this worked out and documented, which is way more organized than I was before.
So. What d'you think?
Sé onr sverdar sitja hvass!
-Trinity