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Double Stream Days, Preptember plans, & more 100KQ4 (or 100K with Kate!) chat
🕑 Added 2024-08-29 20:31:42 +0000 UTCHelloooooo!
Tomorrow is our first Double Stream Day of August. :) You can find the link to the stream here and it'll be at 3:30pm CDT.
Our second Double Stream Day will be on Saturday at 10:30am CDT and you can find that link here!
I'm always so excited to write and chat with y'all, but I'm especially excited because I can't wait to workshop a bit more of our 100KQ4 challenge! (Or 100KwithKate? What should we name this?? Lolol. One of the many things we can brainstorm together!)
My heart soared reading all of your responses to that post! It's so funny how many of us were feeling the same way about searching for and yearning for a Fall/Q4 challenge we could feel good participating in. I can't wait to go on this journey with y'all!
Already I have a vague plan for my Preptember. (Which begins in just a few days - ACK!)
I've split things up by week and for the first week, I think I'm going to focus on researching some fun comp titles, maybe even reading a couple, and drafting a pretend query letter. (In the past, this has really helped me narrow in on what my story is about and what its major "selling points" would be! Something useful to keep in mind while drafting for the first time.)
The week after will be all about character "bios." I haven't utilized character bios for a story in a while, but because I'm going to be following multiple, I think it'll help tremendously.
And then for the final half of Preptember, I'm going to use a little hack I've already learned from our Crafts & Drafts book club pick for September & October! When it comes to outlining, I'm going to start from the Beginning to Midpoint (like usual), but then skip to the Final Scene and work my way backwards to the Midpoint again. I'm really excited to test this out and see how it works for me!!
By the time all that's done, it'll be October! And the start of our challenge!!!!!! :)
A couple questions I still have for y'all (and we can discuss these in the comments or on the livestreams tomorrow and Saturday!):
Besides a weekly check-in on Discord, I thought it would also be fun to have a weekly livestream. Something like this scheduled:
Each day that has AN EVENT in capital letters would be a stream. So a few scatted ones during Preptember, a more weekly, Friday check-in during the 100K challenge, and then random "start," "halfway," and "end" streams.
Now for our usual Patreon streams, I try to vary the dates and times so that more people can participate live in at least one each month or every other month. Would we rather weekly streams be on one day at a specific time (like on the "schedule" above) or more like our typical Double Stream Days? Let me know your thoughts!
One of the other requests I saw a lot was a shared tracker of some sort. So huge shout out to Candace for sharing Pacemaker Planner!
I'm playing around with it right now for my A Closet Full of Cauldrons revision and REALLY enjoyed setting it up as a goal.
It's like a lot of trackers, but specifically tailored toward writing and publishing. (You can use it for other stuff, they do have those features, but you can tell it's been made with writers and creators at the forefront!)
For the Group Challenges feature, I'll need to pay the (very small) monthly fee, but to my understanding, we would then ALL be able to contribute this way without fear of accidentally messing up someone else's tracker, like in a Google Sheets example. Otherwise it's free to use for everyone up to 2 or 3 projects, I think.
I'll keep playing around with things the next few days and see if this works for us!
If it does, the question is then: would we want to open this challenge up to other people? (Like talking about this on the main YouTube channel or in Twitch chats more openly and sharing the link to join.) Y'all let me know what you think! I hate making people feel excluded, but some aspects (like the weekly streams and Discord) would just be too much otherwise. If we find that this tracker doesn't work, and we want to just use Google Sheets, then that answers the question as well.
Okay, okay, I think that's it for now! Again, feel free to comment your thoughts down below or chat about it during the upcoming streams. If you've already come up with a rough Preptember plan, I'd love to hear about it as well!
See y'all soon and happy writing!! <3
Comments
Kate Cavanaugh Writes
1000%! I think you can track however you want. Love a rebel. :) Depending on how I can set up our tracking Sheet, you might have to "count" stuff a different way, but I'll let y'all know!
Kate Cavanaugh Writes
Yesssss, absolutely! We'll do check-ins during our Patreon streams and also during posts and stuff here. (Or vlogs or on Twitch streams! Anywhere! Everywhere!!) Lolol.
Author JC Carpenter
I'm totally on board for this challenge. I thought I had commented on this post before but when I went back to check the dates and stuff I see I did not comment lol. I do have one quick question. Will there be a check in option for those who do not have Discord? Asking for a friend lol (me, I am the friend lol). If not I can always just email you to check in lol. I'm ready for #100KwithKate!
Claudia
I love the idea too. However, I was planning on being a NaNoRebel this year -- editing my trilogy instead of starting a novel. Of course, if I'm the only one wanting to do that, that's obviously my problem. But I'd love th community and the external motivation to finally sit down and get it over with. Do you think that editing can be accommodated?
Pericula Ludus
As others have said, I think keeping it to a smaller crowd for this time will be easier to iron out any creases that may appear. I'd really appreciate streams at different times as I'm eight hours ahead of CDT so times like today are a tad late for me and I'm sure others have issues with the pesky time zones or just different life requirements as well. I won't be aiming for 100k myself. I'll be aiming for easing myself back into writing after a long hiatus and every word written will be a success. Really looking forward to having a community thing for what are the darkest and dreariest months of the year where I live!
Aced Coffee
Sadly November is really the only month in Q4 that I can actually commit to writing so I won't be able to do the 100K. Instead, since NaNo has been such a disappointment, I'll do a time commitment for November and see how far that'll carry me through my project. I'll definitely cheer y'all on and join whenever I can :) And I agree that a small group might be better for the first round, makes it easier to see if everything works as planned and troubleshoot if necessary.
Jessica M. Vázquez
I’ll be joining the streams, but I know I can’t do the 100k. I’ll be participating in preptember and zero drafting the rest of the time with you all. :)
Megan Donnelly
I agree that starting with a small “trial” group would be still be a lot of fun! Then, if it ends up being a success (which it obviously will) then you can consider opening it up to more people if you do it again. ☺️
Kerri B
I'll be editing through September so I won't have too much time to plan, but that's okay because I'm planning to use the three months to just finish up a few WIPs. If I take too much time to think about what I'm going to write, I end up getting hit with a dozen shiny new ideas and I need to stop letting them attack me 😂
Misslucyjane
I agree with a small group the first time, to iron out any kinks.
Zara Hoffman
Yeah. My streaming schedule isn’t uniform, but it is planned in advance.
Becca C. Smith
How did I miss this announcement lol! I need to finish book 2 of Hexsphere before the year is out and it's about 100k, so this is a great challenge for me!! And you know me, I say open it to everyone hahaha!! But if it means more work for you, then maybe keep it small this time? No sense in getting overwhelmed when writing 100k will already be overwhelming lol!
Kate Cavanaugh Writes
If I do random/changing “weekly” streams, I can just post up the monthly schedule in advance and have it planned that way! (This is more a note to myself lolol.)
Zara Hoffman
Your choice. I wasn’t sure how much it was.
Kate Cavanaugh Writes
That’s an excellent point!!!
Lynlee Anderson
I think it would be a better idea to keep it to Patreon (for the first time), to make sure that it's doable and the tracker works and everything. If it ends up going well, then you could bring in the other channels, but just in case it doesn't, it's a smaller group of people.
Kate Cavanaugh Writes
It’s really easy to use too! I’ve only done it for a couple days (obviously lol) but it’s fun!!
Kate Cavanaugh Writes
It’s really not too much! I think something like $7 a month or so.
Jimmie Hammel
That tracker looks really nice!
Zara Hoffman
100KwithKate is a great name! I vote like Double Stream Days in case some people can’t make a standard time. Also, I would say it should only be open to people who subscribe to you in some way (Twitch, Patreon, YouTube) because you will be spending money on the tracker.
