NaNoWriMo and Pitch Wars

I just officially signed up to do NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month. You can do it independently (I basically did last year), but if you go to their site and sign up, you're tasked to write 50k words between November 1-30. To give you an idea of what that is, it's ~1,667 words/day. Final word count for Back to December was around 138k words, so it's actually a small volume for me. In the last year, I think I counted and just in my novels/fanfic, I wrote over 1 Million words. That doesn't include emails, blog entries, or the stuff I wrote for my class so far this semester. What can I say? I'm verbose. Or prolific. Take your pick.

During NaNo (as it's called for shorthand), there are people who can give you feedback and encouragement at their website. I'd wanted to do it before, but I guess I was afraid. Now that I have a novel out there for public consumption, it's a little late for the fear stuff. At least in my mind, it is. I'm really looking forward to interacting with other authors.

If anyone else out there is doing NaNo and wants to come along for the ride with me, let me know! My handle over there is PKorbetAuthor (same as my Twitter handle). I'm not sure if I'm going to task myself to complete one of the works I already have started or if I'm going to start something new. The only stipulation is that you have to write 50k words. I've got Book #4 in the Ward Sisters Series, This Year's Love, that still has a long, long way to go before it's done. I could probably write 50k on that. Same with Book 3.5, Buying the Cow - 50k might actually complete that book (it's at about 12k now), since it's a novella. I've got a couple days to decide. I think I'll let my muse speak to me and see what she says.

Regardless, I'm really excited about this project and another one I'm planning to undertake, Pitch Wars. My marketing class has me creating a Marketing Plan, as I've said. One of the things I had to do for the Plan was set objectives for my first two years. Then I need to come up with strategies to meet those goals. I set my goals in my most recent Plan assignment and one of them was to network with other authors. It just so happens that the timing for some of these things is perfect. What better way to do that than a writing contest or two? Pitch Wars involves submitting a manuscript to mentors - authors who have agents and who are often published or about to be. The mentor chooses an author to work with them, critiques their work and readies it for submission to agents. If I get nothing out of it other than exposure to other authors and get someone else to check out my work (and even better, encourage others to do the same), then I'll have won, even if I don't 'win'.

So, that's what I'm doing over the course of the next month. I'll be participating in NaNo and hopefully completing an official first draft of something. I'll be readying a manuscript for Pitch Wars (has to be submitted by 12/2) and then, of course, I'll be completing my final draft for Only One. Oh, and working on my marketing class, but that almost feels like part of my job as a writer, so it's all good. I'll keep you all posted!!