Lessons Learned

This blog post I shared on my Facebook page is a pretty accurate depiction of how I felt about writing when I first heard about NaNoWriMo. What it comes down to is this: writing is putting one foot in front of the other (or writing one word at a time). Good writing is a combination of talent and a whole lot of hard work.

Yeah, sure, sometimes the hard work pays and sometimes it doesn't, but the key is, without the work, the ideas are just figments in your head. No one can know if your ideas are any good until you write them. And you have to write for yourself first. If you don't want to read what you write, then who else will?

Last year, I did my own version of NaNoWriMo by writing a fanfiction. I've mentioned this in the past. This year, I'm officially participating in NaNo and while I kicked butt in the first 10 days, writing 34,003 words in that time on This Year's Love (Book #4 in the Ward Sisters Series), I have been neglecting it lately. Why? Well, I've had other writing projects that have taken precedence. But I'm writing, and that's what matters. I still anticipate finishing NaNo on time, and even if I don't, my book is part of a series and will most certainly be completed soon enough. Truthfully, I'm not sure if making the goal will actually finish my book anyway, but I can knock out 16k words before November 30th.

Regardless, in this past year, my writing has changed dramatically. The biggest lessons I've learned over the past year?

1) Write for yourself
2) Write every day, even if you think it's crap, even if your muse isn't speaking to you, even if the only thing you write is a blog post, an email or a plot outline.
3) Know you'll need to edit. Expect to murder your darling, and to maybe even reassemble the body parts into something you hadn't imagined, to make it worth reading. You are Frankenstein and your work is the monster. Make it pretty. It's going to be hard work.
4) Realize that criticism will happen. Always. There is not a writer out there whom every single person loves. Some people even hate writers who are revered by most, like Shakespeare.
5) Keep going. Whether it's one word at a time, one paragraph at a time, one chapter at a time, one novel at a time, one series at a time, KEEP GOING. You only get better when you write.

Writing has been the biggest blessing in my life outside my children and family. It fills my soul in a way that very little else does. Discovering that fact was such a gift. If you think you want to write, stop talking about it and just DO it. That's what NaNoWriMo is all about. You don't have to do it officially, you don't have to segregate yourself to the month of November. Honor the intent of the project and you'll reap its rewards. Trust me. I know from personal experience.

Writing, writing, and more writing...

It's been a while since I made a blog post, so I'll create a few today. For one, when I'm writing a Facebook post and it starts to look like a blog post, I realize I probably want to write on my blog. Also, I need to post a review of the other book I read via Netgalley so that they might give me more someday, LOL. And I had a draft post that I'd still like to publish, so that will happen, too. So, here we go...

Yet another gross weather day, which is fine. Nasty weather lends itself well to writing, especially in the coziness of my house with the woodstove running. And I have a lot of writing on my plate - #NaNoWriMo, on which I'm still behind; a marketing project (again); a marketing mid-term makeup (that I must kick butt on, since I got spanked on the exam itself); a project to polish for Pitch Wars; and edits for Only One. Yep, that's on top of the list of regular life stuff, plus I'm going to see Catching Fire tomorrow.

I finally finished the major changes to my latest draft of Only One. Did I say this on my blog or just on Facebook? I can't recall. Either way, I said that my muse smacked me around a bit and told me that I was going to make some plot changes for Only One, whether I liked it or not. I'd had a discussion with Laurie (for those of you who don't know, my mentor is author Laurie Breton) after my last draft review and she made a good point about where the story should end. Since I wanted it to end at a certain point, I had to make the rest of the story work toward that. And one major issue was making it...difficult to see why the story should continue after a certain point. So, I made a minor tweak to the plot. Nothing crazy, just changed the timing of an event.

Oh? Did I say nothing crazy? Okay, I lied. I mean, the plot change really wasn't crazy and it makes the story so much better. But once I did that, I had to make some big adjustments to the story to reflect it. Along the way, I came to a couple other realizations about character motivation and BLAM! The story was blown wide open. Questions I hadn't even considered before (but should have) needed to be answered, new scenes were written. On top of all that, I'd been restructuring the manuscript to reflect a more chronological approach, which allowed me to answer those questions and simultaneously enrich the story. More conflict, layers of the characters that were there but not shown well, these things appeared as I made the changes. Best of all? I didn't set out to give an explanation for something in Back to December, but I realized today that anyone who has read both stories will hopefully appreciate the information.

Now, I'm going back through to make sure my changes on Only One are consistent. I'm hoping to finish today. As you can see, I haven't been writing on NaNo, but I have been writing. I still have 8 days to finish my last 16k for NaNo, and for me, that isn't as big a challenge as it might be for others. I tend to write a lot. But I really wanted to get Only One out for a holiday release, and if I don't get the latest draft ready for review, then it won't be possible. Book 2 takes precedence over Book 4. If I can manage to actually finish Book 4, maybe it can be my Pitch Wars submission. I don't know; I was thinking I didn't need a 100% finished manuscript, but I guess I do. *shrug* We'll see; this might not be the year to do it. Maybe next year will be better. My class has to take priority, since it is being graded.

I'll post two more blog posts, one of which will be a review for Temptation Bay by Anna Sullivan. The other is about writing. Enjoy! And wish me luck getting that To-Do list done...

Gearing up for NaNoWriMo

Today, I'm gearing up for NaNo, which starts tomorrow. I decided that I'm going to focus on completing Book #4 of the Ward Sisters Series, Annie and Josh's story, This Year's Love. It's about halfway to where I like to be for word count. Yes, I know I'm verbose. I like to write and then cut, so with This Year's Love at ~60k, I've still got at least 50k left. The purpose of NaNo is to just get it all out there, so my goal is to have this story 100% drafted by the end of November.

Strangely enough, though this is Book #4, I realized that I need to write it before I write Book #3.5, Buying the Cow, which is a novella about Josh's best friend, Eddie Besson. The timeline actually overlaps This Year's Love, and I know where it starts and where it ends, but I have to fill in the middle. Well, the middle will be impacted by what happens in This Year's Love, so it just makes more sense to write that now. And Book #3, Right Here Waiting, is too close to completion for NaNo.

I've been reading Kristen Lamb's Blog entries about getting ready for NaNo, and one of the things she talks about is feeding your muse. With this book, I've already written part of it, so I've done a fair bit of research. It's also part of a series, so there is connection to the other stories. And then there is my writing method, which, when I'm in the zone and writing 8-10k words each day (yes, I can do that, I really can! I type faster than I write and talk), I work best if I've got a soundtrack playing. Not in my head, literally in my ears. So, one thing I'll do today is beef up the This Year's Love playlist on Spotify. One of the things I love about using Spotify is that I can go from my desktop to my laptop and I don't have to do anything special to access the playlist. Love it. Anyway, this book hasn't been a priority, so its playlist is pretty shallow. That'll have to change.

As I said in yesterday's post, NaNo sets the writer up to average about 1,700 words/day to meet the goal. Since I have this marketing class and I'm editing Only One and I need to polish something for Pitch Wars and oh, yeah, I have kids and a husband and a job as caregiver/housekeeper/cook/CFO, I probably can't devote all my time to banging out This Year's Love in just a few short days, thus, completing NaNo in a week. Which is fine; I'm not doing this because I haven't disciplined myself to write every day. I write. Every day. Not always on any one thing, but I do it every.single.day. I have to write. It drives me nuts if I don't and the days we went camping this summer and I had to be unplugged, I wanted to tear my hair out because I couldn't sit with a cup of coffee and write first thing. I won't have trouble meeting the goal. But I'll need to be more rigid about my non-writing activities. Priorities, people.

Thus, I might be a little less present on Facebook and Twitter (I know, you're all so sad). And I'm thinking I need to examine what's on my DVR and decide what can be ditched or watched online instead. Writing, class and my family will have to take precedence over reading, TV and social networking this month. It's all good; I'm sure I won't be 100% absent from any one thing, but you have to do what it takes!

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!!