So finally I decided to register for NaNoWriMo. I have to admit I’m a little nervous. Can I write 50,000 words in a month? What will the quality of my draft be like? Many questions pop in my head and at the same time I feel excited to tackle the challenge and to have a chance to win.

The answer to all the doubts is always the same: take one step at a time. I love Stephen King’s answer to a reporter that asked him about how he wrote his books, and King said one word after the other. And that’s exactly true, you go one step at a time and that’s how you get things done. I’ve been watching the US Open this week that so many great players have been eliminated and I remember Federer saying that what is amazing in tennis is that any player has a chance of winning. The thing is that each new ball in play can be won by any of the players, no matter who you are. You just have to be there and play the point till it’s over to the best of your ability. The same thing happens with writers, you have to show up and write your story till the end, squeeze the juice out of each idea as much as you can, one word at a time.

But now I’m facing another choice: should I start planning the novel now and come November I’ll have a refined idea for my novel with a lot of the planning already in place? Or, and this is more me, should I come up with an idea in the rough and start writing it in November hoping that all the pieces will fall into place as I go? Now that I put it in writing I think the first option is more likely to take me to the finish line than trying to write 50,000 words just with a rough idea of what my story will be. All in all, I like also the possibility that even if I plan my novel a couple of months in advance, I will still have the room to come up with new stuff as I write more and more. If you’re writing your novel, and you want to share, how do you work? Do you plan as much as you can before you start writing or do you write and then rewrite and correct?