8 Great Books to Prep for NaNoWriMo

The first thing you have to do before you can get to writing your next great novel? You have to be inspired. If you’re struggling for an idea or you’re just feeling stuck getting words across the page, Brian Kiteley’s inspired writing prompts in The 3 A.M. Epiphany will help you get through any writer’s block.

Got your idea ready to go? Great. It’s time to organize. Lindsey Grant and Tavia Stewart-Streit’s Ready, Set, Novel! is the perfect workbook with prompts to help you develop characters, scenes, and outlines for your great NaNoWriMo novel. This workbook really thinks of literally every step of the novel-planning process and guides you through it.

You’ve got your outline. Great. How do you turn that outline into a riveting novel that people will actually read and, you know, enjoy? Lisa Cron is here to help with that! This book looks at how the brain responds to fiction. Cron uses cognitive storytelling strategies and develops a step-by-step guide to making a blueprint for a successful story that actually goes somewhere interesting.

After you’ve got your tools together to write your own NaNoWriMo novel, the next thing you need for a bit of inspiration is some advice from successful novelists. Haruki Murakami’s memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is the author’s look at his life as a marathon runner and a writer. Murakami makes many parallels between the discipline it takes to run a marathon and the discipline it takes to write. And what better analogy could there be for the NaNoWriMo writing process? This book will inspire you to start your own writing marathon, if not your own running marathon.

Looking for inspiration that’s a little more abstract? Try Khaled Talib’s The Little Book of Muses. This book is full of phrases, reflections, and expressions that will make you fall in love with the written word all over again. Hopefully some of the beautiful words written in this book will spark some beautiful words of your own in your NaNoWriMo project.

When you’re in the middle of your NaNoWriMo project and you’re feeling discouraged, remind yourself that writing is powerful. No really. Reading and writing can give people the power to change the world. Don’t believe me? Then check out Black Ink. This book looks at over 250 years of Black literature, from Frederick Douglass to Ta-Nehisi Coates. In this collection, African American authors look at the way Black people have been historically disenfranchised through a lack of access to reading and writing, and how literature can be an act of resistance.

Okay, so you understand that writing is important. You know that you want to write something meaningful. The next hurdle: finding time to do it. Barbara DeMarco-Barrett understands that a lot of writers (especially women) never get around to writing because they feel like they don’t have the time. This book aims to help you find the time. Even if it’s just 15 minutes a day. Or when you’re waiting in line. Or stalled in traffic. There are minutes throughout the day you can use to write, and this book will help you find them.

After you’ve finished NaNoWriMo November, the work isn’t over. Surely you didn’t think those published NaNoWriMo novels when straight from NaNoWriMo to the press. A first draft is always going to need lots of edits, especially when you’re writing so fast and furiously throughout the short month of November. Renni Browne and Dave King can help you get from your messy first draft to a publishable novel.