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The NaNoWriMo Pre-Season

For many years my NaNoWriMo season started in October. Since the NaNo website relaunched in early October (and one year in late September), this was a normal thing to happen. I would get excited over the site relaunch a few weeks in advance, then pounce the forums when the site relaunches in its clean, sometimes redesigned glory. And then I’d take over the forums or lament the fact that I couldn’t immediately, as was the case a couple of years.

But as the years passed and I started running Wikiwrimo, I found myself getting excited for NaNo and getting ready for it much sooner. This is normal for some folks too; after all, they may come up with a great idea and start planning it. While I’ve come up with some great ideas months in advance, my pantsing ways have led to coming up with ideas closer and closer to NaNo.

Running Wikiwrimo has contributed the most to the pre-season sneaking up on me earlier and earlier. The site relaunch every October means a scramble to gather everything possible about previous NaNos during the months before the relaunch happens, lest that content get lost forever. “Forever” may be an exaggeration; after all, the Internet Archive is a great resource, and sometimes the NaNo website provides the official archives. But the archives aren’t currently available, and for some years (2004, I’m looking at you), they really are gone forever. Not to mention the Internet Archive simply doesn’t archive some pages, and some pages are hard to access.

This leads to the best solution I’ve found: archive all that content before it goes down. This usually means in August or September so I’m not overwhelmed by everything that needs to get done the week before. Wikiwrimo can easily become a second job this time of year if I let it. And let’s not forget all the new info that arrives come site relaunch: new forum moderators, new regions, other new site features that need Wikiwrimo mentions… If I’m going to do Wikiwrimo well and still get excited about NaNo, my NaNo season needs to start months in advance in order to avoid burnout. Luckily this excitement is an organic one, probably because my love of NaNo and desire to archive all the things tend to feed off each other.

Long-time MLs can probably relate; they’ve led their regions for long enough that they know the routine by now and start planning months in advance. They may plan by booking venues for events, getting items for goody bags, and getting prizes for their Wrimos. Starting to plan in October is a guarantee for burnout and stress; it’s why MLs now get accepted earlier. This is especially important for international MLs so they can order ML goodies from the store and get them in time for the kickoff party. (Trust me on this; I’m a former ML.) The planning can feed the excitement, which can then feed the desire to keep planning (or in my case, archiving).

And then there are the other features I keep coming up with, and there’s simply not enough time to implement everything, not to mention a few other NaNo-related archiving projects I have up my sleeve. I like my current job, but creating everything I have in mind for Wikiwrimo could easily become a second job (or at least a part-time job) for awhile.

This is why I start talking about NaNo so early… all year long, at times. If I don’t, none of this would get done.

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