Well, to that question, I say “No!” Or “Yes!” Actually, the only thing I can say with certainty is “That depends!”

Here are a couple of planning pitfalls I’ve experienced in the two and a half years I’ve been participating in NaNoWriMo.

Changing Your Mind
I started thinking about NaNoWriMo 2009 about a week ago. I was lying in bed, and as my mind started to wander, I started imagining a character and a scenario that were perfect for a novel, or so it seemed in my half-sleep state of mind. I sprung from my bed, fired up the Eee PC and wrote the following note to myself:

astronaut on very long journey loses lights and communication. astronaut goes nuts before they can send rescue vessel.

The next morning, I started to do a little brainstorming. OK, who is this guy? Why is he alone in space? What does his vessel look like? Who loves him? What are the stakes? Why do all of my novel ideas involve intergalactic travel??? By the end of the day, I was already tired of my story. It was already too much like A Space Odyssey, and I haven’t even read A Space Odyssey! So I scrapped it.

Later that evening, a title popped into my head: “There’s a Boy in Here.” Based on my recent experiences of writing stories based on titles, I was excited by the possibilities this context-less title held. I took notes for a couple days. I drew a couple pictures of scenes and settings. I thought of a new form that would blow people away. I searched for “There’s a Boy in Here” on Google just to make sure it was an original title. And it wasn’t. So I scrapped it all again.

Yesterday, I got my third NaNoWriMo idea in a week, and it’s only August. I like this one, so I’m trying not to think about it too much, but I don’t work that way. I’ve already got a Google Doc full of ideas.

I may learn another lesson about planning this year, but I won’t know until November 30. I’m hoping that, by then, I won’t be left to wonder if I ditched out on my earlier ideas too soon. If I were to have thought of a man in space by himself on October 31, 2009, maybe I would have written something I really liked, something that was nothing like A Space Odyssey. Who knows?

Setting Plot Expectations Too High
In No Plot? No Problem!, Chris Baty warns that overplanning may set yourself up for failure. I’m paraphrasing here, but if your novel is too planned out, the words you write may not match the ones in your head. Two years ago, that’s exactly what happened to me. Last year, I started with very little, and I somehow managed to pull an entire novel out of myself just by banging on the keyboard every night.

In 2007, before I read No Plot? No Problem!, I started with a fairly detailed outline, and dropped out after two frustrating weeks. At that point, according to my outline, my protagonist was already supposed to have met his long-lost twin. But in my actual novel, he still hadn’t left work for the day – and he still had to find the letter, travel to Virginia, and attend his mother’s funeral! Ah, screw it!

So, in the spirit of not wanting to over-plan, I approached last year’s NaNoWriMo with no plot at all. All I had was a character and a premise: a geriatric Senator and an interstellar flight gone wrong. And guess what. I “won.” It’s no Sirens of Titan, but it’s more than 50,000 words, and all of the elements of a novel are in there: themes, settings, characters. (Just remind me to finish editing it some time).

Hopefully, for NaNoWriMo 2009, I can brainstorm about themes, characters, and perspective without planning and eventually bailing out of a plot.

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So, as for the question, “Is it too soon to be planning my NaNoWriMo novel?” Well, like I said at the top, I can only say “That depends.” Can you plan it without killing it?