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Ruth Kaufman - Award-Winning Author and Romance Writer

Ruth Kaufman is the author of My Life as a Star, My Life as an Extra, My Once & Future Love, The Bride Tournament, Follow Your Heart, At His Command and other books.

NaNo day by day…or how I’m writing my next book

November 5, 2015 By Ruth Kaufman


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….

Filed Under: NaNo, NaNoWriMo, Uncategorized, write a novel

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