As you can see, I haven’t blogged in years, in part because I’d decided to switch to a newsletter. Some authors and other professionals manage to create successful newsletters, but factors including the monthly cost (compared to my minimal book sales) while endeavoring to add subscribers, ever-changing privacy compliance rules and not releasing more new books helped me decide to return to blogging to communicate with anyone interested. [Read more…] about What is writing success?
NaNo day by day…or how I’m writing my next book
NaNo is here! This is the first time I’ve participated in National Novel Writing Month. I joined my region, added some buddies, thought about what to work on….
Day 1 I sat down at my desk early in the morning, eager to get some words in before going to my mom’s for lunch.
I love when I’m really in a character’s head and s/he says something I hadn’t thought of. Even if that changes the direction of the story.
More difficult than I thought Day 1 would be…I expected it to be a mind dump, where I’d spill all of my thoughts onto the page and get a lot of words right off the bat.
Day 2 Better. I want to write more than the 1,667 needed to meet the 50,000 word count goal and “win,” to stay ahead in case there’s a day I’m so busy I don’t want to write.
Day 3 Like pulling teeth. It took much too long to get the words down, and they were only coming in dribs and drabs. I have other work I need to do.
Day 4 Better flow. I’m happy with some of the scenes I’ve come up with, and am trying not to worry about the execution right now.
I seem to be focusing on plot and the fantasy element. I can add more romance after November, but I think having both at the same time helps me come up with ideas. When you have a multi-subgenre project like this one, it’s hard to know what balance will interest readers more.
In other writing news, I really want to be a hybrid author. For decades I’ve dreamed of getting “the call” from a traditional publisher who loves my work and wants to work with me. To that end, and because a successful author friend thinks my sales numbers thus far might be of interest to an agent, I queried a few with my new series…and already got a request from someone I’d love to have. So, yay to that. But, she’s read other projects over the years and passed, and I’ve heard this can be a tough subgenre, so less yay.
Day 5 Have a lot of other work to do, including an audition and some promo for my self-published books. Wrote a few words this morning. May have to finish word count tonight, which I’d rather not do….
