Going to do it this year.
I have three partially-finished horror bits that I think could be something…
Since I can’t post images (but I remembered when it could be done! Others confirmed it! I’m not crazy! Well, not for THAT reason, anyway), here’s a link to the lovely cover art for* Death Train*. 
Here it is! All pretty and shiny and PS.CS5-y!
Is anyone else doing covers? Please post a link if so!
Cover?? I don’t even have a title. 
Okay, so, I know it’s a little late to be asking this questions(!), but for those who have done this before and completed their story, what do you recommend as far as prep work? How helpful is it to have some kind of story/character/setting prepared, or is it better to just totally wing it and see where it goes?
'Cause right now I’ve got nothin’.
Ok - I have a character and a concept, which is not quite the same as a plot - but I think that in the next 23 hours, I can figure out what the first 1667 words will need to be about and I can go from there.
Rodgers01 - I’ve done this several times - the only year I didn’t win was a year where I had a really carefully planned out idea, with characters and outlines laid out in October. I just couldn’t make it come together. I had known exactly what I wanted to do and it didn’t work. The very best of my books was another year where I’d planned and plotted the whole thing - and it did come together. The next two in quality? Completely winging it.
More important - give yourself time to write and the freedom to write dreck. You can fix it in the edit.
I had a short story that I wanted to revisit, that was year (and book) one. I kind of knew how it would finish.
Next time, I wanted to find out what happened after that.
Basically, I start with a handful of scenes. I spend the month working out how my characters get to those places. Sometimes those first scenes don’t end up in the story at all. I spend a lot of time asking myself questions; Why do they go there? How would she react to that news? Who would be the worst person to see this happen? Every answer seems to suggest another question.
I’m a “percolator”–the times when I’m successful in a writing project it’s usually because I’ve let it stew around in my brain for a long time–months to years. The story I finished for 2011 NaNo (it ended up being a 138,000 word novel) had actually been perking since 2005. The one I did for the June and August 2012 NaNos (which ended up being about 160,000 words) perked from December 2011 (when I finished the first one) to June 2012. This one has been perking since August, but then again, it’s the third in the trilogy so technically some of the pre-perking has already been done over the course of the other two.
I usually just use a combination of perking and writing down little snippets of ideas, scenes, things I want to be sure to remember, and then I start writing. Starting is always the hardest for me, so I give myself permission to write crap on the first day: “Just get your 1,667 words down, even if they’re awful.” It works–and they’re usually not awful when I read over them again. Starting a book for me is kind of like breaching the pristine skin of a new jar of peanut butter–hard to do, but oh so satisfying when it’s done! 
HALP! I need advice on what to write about!
My ideas:
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some kind of caper or scam featuring carbon biosequestration and a Christmas tree farm.
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a fantasy-ish story about a pilgrim with an invisible sidekick and an uncanny knack for… something…
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a sad story about a small city opera company’s gradual downslide into mediocrity.
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based on a real dream I had once, I (or certain facimilie of I) find myself transported back in time to the Gold Coast in the 1950s, just in time to be elected on to the City Council and prevent all the disastrous development.
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based on our visit to Australia Zoo last year - what’s it like for an organization (i.e., zoo) based around a larger-than-life personality, when that person has been dead for ten years?
Uh. Have you considered Ninjas?
Thanks both for the advice! Right now it is what it is - and I’m excited!!*
*And scared. 
Yah, afternoon here and I’m 300 words in. 1367 to go for the day.
I’m scared too.
I have a plot!
Just in time.
I’ve lost a subplot!
It was complicating the action too much, it can occur in exposition. Damn but that would have been a wordy wordy segment, but the timing was just so wrong.
http://writeordie.com/ is also a very useful tool.
I really wanted to do it this year, but somehow I forgot that November starts right after October. Now I’m here with only vague emotions I want to write about, and nothing else. I am thinking on it today and may or may not sign up before the day is out.
This one brought to mind Christopher Hitchens’ description of North Korea as a necrocracy. So of the ones you mentioned, probably this one.
I’ve written 646 words so far, so I’ll be doing some more writing this evening.
764 words from two morning Twitter sprints. (the NanoSprints twitter feed is great motivation if you’re inclined to sprint writing.)
More after work - there’s a local writein this evening, yay!
Cool. Are you going to be autobiographical, that is, bringing up things that have been discussed in therapy? Or is the act of writing, itself, supposed to be theraputic?
No particular need to answer, I’m just curious.
No need to be more organized than that. The idea is to produce 50,000 written words, not necessarily to have them in a coherant order. If you discover a plot or a theme or a character 10,000 words in, just change direction. Those 10,000 words still count for NaNo.
The direction I want to go this year, I suspect that I’ll have to write 300,000 words to get something that could be edited into 50,000 words that someone might find interesting enough to read. If I want that, I’ll have to keep writing into next year.
Or I could get 50,000 words that could be edited down to a short story. Or I could just get the experience of doing the amount of typing and wrestling that it takes to be a writer. Or I’ll get to meet and talk to some new people (it looks like we’ll have competing meet-ups in our area). Or I’ll meet a few people on the NaNo forums that I like to talk plot/story/language/etc with. Any of that makes it worth signing up. At least, it does for me this year.
I signed up! I’ve always been good with words, but now I guess I’ll try and put my money where my mouth is, so to speak. I’m also happy to help with brainstorming if needed.
1,689 words in, so I figure I’m done for the day.