NaNoWriMo: How I Prepared

We're about half way through the month, which should mean half way through my novel, right? Haha... right. Anyway! Though this is my first year attempting NaNoWriMo I am in no way new to writing novels/stories. So in preparation (as per the suggestion from le internet), I did my planning at the end of October. I knew my story pretty well, it'd been developing for 6 years, but I wanted to make sure I knew everything about it before November came and I had to actually write it and make it sound good. Today, I thought I'd share with you some of the stuff I did to prepare.

First, I bought a journal. This lovely little journal you've seen on my other NaNoWriMo posts is, in fact, my NaNoWriMo planning book! I bought it specifically for this story and for NaNoWriMo. I don't usually buy spiral bound notebooks, but it seemed the most functional for this month. This little notebook was an ever present accessory for me for the last two weeks of October.

I'm one of those super paranoid egotistical people who thinks
everyone wants to steal my story, hence the burring.
Sorry, except I'm not.

Next, I mapped out the major plot points I wanted in my novel from beginning to end. I also tentatively assigned each a chapter. I've certainly changed a lot of the chapter assignments and added a lot from this list of 13! 

Like the fancy swirls I did there to hide the building names?

In my hours of procrastination from my school work, I drew up a map of the main setting of my novel, the school campus! I was really excited about this. I started with little sketches in my journal and suddenly decided I needed a good one as a constant reference point, so I drew it up, as basic as it is, and then got carried away with the watercolours and fancy labeling of each building. I really enjoyed making the map and I'm really glad to have it now, even if I don't describe the path a character takes to somewhere, I like to know what they'd pass in case anyone should ever ask.

Finally, I decided I needed a cast of characters. I wrote out each name of the main characters with a short bio, physical description, and relation to other characters. I've also been adding to this the minor characters I've used should I need to spell their name again or should they become strangely important.

I would say I'm one of those writers who likes to let the story take me, so sometimes I'm surprised by the importance of certain characters. Granted I've worked on and thought about this story for 6 years, every character has changed drastically since the first imagining and I have to say I'm fairly happy with this one finally.

If you're participating in NaNoWriMo, how did you prepare or did you? If you aren't how did/do you like to plan and organize projects/papers/etc. in school or at work?