NaNoWriMo Archives - Annie Bellet

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Nano Crazy 2012

So, I finished Avarice: Pyrrh Considerable Crimes Division Book 1 and it is currently going through edits. It’ll be up sometime in early November I think.

The good news is that I’m writing again. I still feel weird and a little rusty after the accidental break I took, but so far my first readers are saying Avarice is really good, so at least my feelings aren’t reflecting on the writing quality too much.

So I’m getting ready for NaNoWriMo. I have a couple of novellas to finish up this week so I can get the first Gryphonpike Chronicles omnibus out, but then I’m going to switch to writing a few short novels (pulp length- 35k-45k) for NaNoWriMo and beyond.

And because I love covers and they help me focus on what I’m doing, here’s a preview of what I’ll be working on:

The Dying of the Light: military fantasy about a non-combatant who carries the banner of the king (art by Katerina Romanova).

A Prince Called Courage: fairytale fantasy/romance about a cursed prince, a quest, and making the right decisions (art by Claudia McKinney).

Mayhem: fantasy about a girl living on an archipelago who accidentally releases an evil power into the world and must stop it (art by Tiziano_Baracchi).

So that’s what I’ll be working on during November (along with maybe a couple more, but I don’t have covers for those yet and I might not get to them until December anyway). It works out to about 4,000 words a day or about 3-4 hours of work daily to finish these. As usual for my Nano Crazy, I don’t expect I’ll get everything done, but the nice thing about aiming for lots is that even getting half or more done means getting a lot finished. Anything I get finished will be edited and available to read by the end of the year, so if any of these look cool, make a note. 🙂

October Summary and NaNoWriMo Challenge Thingy

So, first off. October was my best e-book sales month yet, with 184 sales (that I know about, SW hasn’t reported for October for the places like Sony and Apple). 124 of those sales were from post-free sales last weekend after the short story collection and the novel I had up free went back to paid. Seems a little crazy, but giving away thousands of copies of my work seems to help sell the work later. Who knew? I’m definitely going to continue with the experimenting there.

A year ago, my friend Amanda and I bet each other that we could write 100,000 words a month. We both owe each other a lot of dinners, because neither of us ever made it to 100,000 in a single month. Between the health problems, the job loss, Clarion, and other things, my own writing this year fell off a lot.

But it is November again. Which means time for another November Crazy Challenge. I’m not actually going to do NaNo this year because I’m currently working on novellas, but I’m going to be a NaNo rebel and go with that.

So what’s the challenge? Finish five novellas this month. The word total should be around 110,000 because one novella is already partially done, so even though I’m aiming for 25,000 words per book, I don’t quite have to write 125k to get there this month.

The word count breakdown is 4,075 a day for 27 days. It isn’t 30 days because I’m going to be at Orycon and I know I won’t get anything done on those days.

I’ll post what I got done at the end of the month and probably keep a running tab on Twitter.

I know, I know, I can hear the head-shaking now. Yep, I’m sure that everything I write will suck, blah blah blah, why don’t I slow down and make the books good, blah blah blah, why don’t I work less than four hours a day because writing for four hours a day is nuts, blah blah blah. The nice thing is, no one will ever know what I wrote during this time and only other writers seem to care how fast something gets written anyway. Good thing, too.

Anyway, if anyone is also doing NaNo, I’m around on the forums over there. Good luck to all of you. Writing daily is a great habit to develop. Go forth and do it.

November Summary plus Extras

So first, my story “No Spaceships Go” will be out from Daily Science Fiction on December 17th it looks like. So go sign up for their daily stories already, geez. (Though it will also be posted on the website at some point as well if you’re somehow allergic to getting awesome fiction in your inbox each weekday morning). Besides this being my first pro sale, it is also a story I really love. I write a lot of stories and I’m not sure I could even list the titles of all of them off the top of my head (probably, with some serious thinking, because I do have a good memory, but I might miss one or two). However, I play favorites like woah. This story was one of my favorites and I’m very happy that Daily SF took a chance on it.

So in November my writing went not too poorly, but I’ve discovered that writing while in pain really, really sucks. Or perhaps rediscovered, since I had to do it this summer when I pinched a nerve in my shoulder. I have my new keyboard now and am so far liking it (it’s only been a day, so no idea how it will serve in the long term). I’ve also adjusted my desk and my chair and gotten a wrist brace to try for the more sore wrist. All these things will hopefully contribute to less pain and a more consistent writing schedule.

All that aside, I managed about 52,000 words this month. That means a handful of new stories out to markets and some of what will be the first novel in my Pyrrh Considerable Crimes series. I’m going to be finishing up the novel in the next week or two, then it’ll go to first readers, then to the copy editor, and finally (hopefully!) on or around Jan 31st, 2011, it’ll be available to purchase.

For December I’m going to take it somewhat easy. While I’d like to be writing 5-6 hours a day, I know that on many days I’ll have other commitments (I have a huge family, and the holidays are always made of crazy sauce). So I’m setting my daily goal at 10 pages each week day and 5 pages each weekend day. I’m planning on writing the second Pyrrh novel this month, as well as starting a romance novel that will go out to traditional publishers in Feb. I was going to write my horror/western, but it needs to percolate more I think, and I’m debating writing it for e-pub instead of trying to figure out how the hell I’d pitch something like that to trad publishers. We’ll see. I like that I have all sorts of options now and can pretty much write whatever I feel like (not that I wouldn’t anyway, I’m stubborn like that, but nice to know I might actually get paid for this stuff).

So November was a mixed bag. I didn’t hit my goal, but I got over the halfway point and I still got something done, which is better than nothing. Even if I only get 50k words each month next year, that would still be 600k words of new fiction ready for various markets and experiments, which isn’t a bad production rate. So we’ll see. I’m going to aim for more like 75k to 100k a month, but it’ll depend on schedules and wrists and my own laziness.

Speaking of laziness, I’ve been playing some Mass Effect 2 (well, helping my husband play by mining planets for him and such). I mention it because the world-building is boggling and awesome. Flying around and reading the different planet descriptions alone has been a joy and very inspiring. After I finish up the next couple novel projects (or perhaps in between), I’m totally going to get some sf stories done. I wrote fantasy in November pretty much, so maybe it’s time to return to space. Hmm, I wonder if I can write ME2 off on my taxes? It’s totally helping my writing, totally. *grin*

(Speaking of taxes, I’ll be filing my first schedule C this Jan. I’ll definitely be posting about that process around then, because I think more information needs to be available on how this works exactly. I’m going to hire a professional to talk me through it the first time, because while I’m competent as the house accountant, I’d rather not mess up when it comes to the IRS. They aren’t exactly forgiving of honest errors. So look for a post about that, and some neo-pro interviews coming soon!)

That Time of Year Again, or NaNoWriMo

I’ve technically done Nanowrimo (or National Novel Writing Month) three times now. I’ve “won” it twice. Last year I intended to be a nano rebel and do a short story a day for the month until my brain got hijacked by insomnia. This year I’m going for a hybrid of sorts. I’m going to write a 45-55k novel and also aim to complete 11 short stories. I predict this will be 90-100k words this month.

There are many conflicting opinions about NaNoWriMo. Some seem to feel that it encourages bad writing, and for people to try to publish bad writing in the after months (I’ve even seen some agent blogs complaining that they get nano novels in December and how annoying that is). My personal opinion is that NaNo is what you make of it. If you want to write a crazy book that is full of in-jokes, word and plot prompts, and probably something only your mother will love, go ahead. I don’t care. Doesn’t bug me a bit. Writing is fun, or I wouldn’t be doing it.

If you want to write a novel with the goal for publication? Do that. Is it possible to write 50,000+ good words in a month? Hell yes. In fact, many professional writers do it all the time. It’s simple to do if you carve out the writing time. Here, I’ll do the math for my own plans:

11 short stories: word count on this will vary. I’m aiming for between 2500 and 7500 words per story. A 7500 word story takes me generally 6-9 hours to write (depending on multiple factors like plotting, research, etc). Most of my stories tend to fall in the 4-5k word range, so we’ll say 55,000 words from shorts. That’s about 55-60 hours of writing at my usual pace.

Then the novel. I’m going for 45-55k words, which is a short novel. But this novel isn’t going to be shopped to traditional publishing. It’s going to be e-pubbed (after first readers and a professional editor see it, of course. I wouldn’t put a rough draft up for sale, clearly). My natural length for novels is fairly short, so I think this is a good length and a pace I can keep up for four books a year. The novel will likely take about 70 hours of work (I’ve done a lot of world-building and pre-planning over the last year, so now what’s left is to write the damn thing).

70+60=130 hours of work in a month. 130/30= 4.3333333 hours a day. That’s right. A bit over four hours a day. When was the last time you worked a four hour day? Writing is my sole source of employment, so there’s really no reason I can’t put four hours a day into it. My actual plan is to put six or seven hours a day in on weekdays and whatever I can fit in on weekends. November is full of weddings, baptisms, parties, Thanksgiving, etc for me, so I know I won’t be able to find hours every single day. Hence the over-writing on some days so I can have slack time for when things come up (because when in life don’t things come up, right?).

So that’s my NaNoWriMo plan. I’m on the nanowrimo.org website under “izanobu” if anyone is doing it and wants to be buddies there (progress bars are fun!).

Good luck to everyone going along on the fun of NaNo!

Reflections and Going Forward

I’ve now been writing full-time for over a year, technically. I say technically because this time last year, I’d just started graduate school, and it was eating my life while I sat confused and miserable wondering how something that had seemed like such a good idea at the time could go so wrong. In the end, I determined the program I was in wasn’t a good fit for me. I gave it a year, and thought about pushing through the final year. However, I wanted to know if I could actually get a decent amount of writing done without grad school, since my production while in it was pretty poor (about as bad as when I was working 70 hours a week, really).

So I quit. This summer was full of moving, vacations, family obligations, and Worldcon. Even so, in the last four months I’ve managed to write two short stories, get all 10 short stories currently on submission polished as best I’m able, and finish a novel. It’s not been the smoothest going, nor the easiest thing ever. There are days when the rejections stream in (today there were two more…) and everything I do feels like it’ll never amount to anything at all. I even start scanning the job listings wondering if anyone will hire someone who has been out of work a year and has two pretty useless degrees (unless you need some Anglo Saxon translated?).

Then something happens to remind me, to nudge me back onto the path. Some days it’s schadenfreude, I’ll be honest. I read a forum post, or a workshop story post, or I’m talking to someone, or occasionally see something in a magazine and think “god, that’s stupid/terrible/sad, I’m totally not that clueless/bad/pathetic.” Some days it’s seeing how far I’ve come, the days when I read over a line or a paragraph and think “hey, that kinda works, what I did there. I think I understand foreshadowing now!” Some days it’s other people like my first readers who read my stuff and tell me they like this or that, or that they can really see improvement. And some days, the best days, it’s the writing itself, when it grabs me by the brains and I race along the story with every piece falling into place like a master level Go game on fast forward.

And looking ahead, I think I can keep going. I’ve got a novel done, and three people have already finished reading it for me, with two more due to finish in the next week or two. They’re compiling lots of information and commentary for me to sift through so I can make it the best it can be. And reading about the market right now, I’m sort of happy I decided to work on this novel, which is a fantasy with pretty strong romantic elements, instead of trying to finish Casimir Hypogean. Debut science fiction seems like it’s a tough sell right now, so breaking in with a fantasy novel might be easier. Of course, there’s no way to know if Chwedl will even sell. But I’m glad I’m making this the first effort the world might see and saving the more complex stuff for later.

Novel project 2 will have to start in a couple months, as soon as Chwedl’s query is out the door to agents. I’m not sure what to do. Part of me really wants to finish Casimir Hypogean to polished draft and then do roughs of the other two novels in the series just so I have them done enough that if by some chance the first sells, I won’t be coming back years later and tackling that world cold. However, while I think the novels have great potential, I think in some ways the steampunk mysteries I want to write might be an easier pitch. Local alternate history, alchemy, airships, murder, clockwork cats, and quirky characters? I mean, how can I lose? The Casimir story is in my head right now, however. It’s been coalescing for a few years now, ever since I wrote that terrible rough draft. I’m not sure how the third book ends, but I know how the second one goes, and how the third begins. I figure by the time I get there, it’ll be clear how it has to go. The steampunk book will take a lot of research, the Casimir books almost none (and what research there is I can keep doing as I go).

So I have some thinking to do. Meanwhile, I’ve been researching and doing rough quasi-outlines/notes for stories for my crazy short story month plans. It’s definitely time to start thinking about the workshop applications too. I want to apply early this year to all of them, get it out of the way. In some ways, I’m stressing about it more this year than I was last. Last year I really wanted to go, but it was mostly because I wanted to work with the people at CW. This year, I want to go for me. I think that either the Clarions or Odyssey could help push my writing to the next level. I’m clearly on the threshold, if my “nice” rejection stack means anything. I want to get past the personal rejections and make a sale, to write the kinds of stories that editors can’t put down. I think the workshops could help with this, could help me find out what I need to learn or practice to get closer to where I want to be as a writer.

I’ll likely be posting very boring somewhat daily updates during November about my short story mission. Stay tuned for the crazy!

Crazy Short Story Plans

Still no word on my WotF third quarter entry.

Which means I really need to distract myself. I’m between novels at the moment, so the best way to keep up my writing habits is to work on short stories. I’ve got 9 out on the market right now. I need more. I want to saturate the market with my work, plus starting in January I’ll be super busy trying to write an entire trilogy in six months while querying about my current novel. And I have three workshops to apply to, all of which want slightly different word counts etc…

Inspired by Jim C. Hines post, I’ve decided to push some stories at more anthologies. Writing to a specific theme isn’t really something I’ve done before. Even with the Shine anthology, which I was very nicely rejected from recently, I wrote a story that I’d been wanting to write and thought it might fit (it didn’t, which once it was written I knew it was a long shot). So I think it would be an interesting challenge to myself as a writer to write for some anthologies.

I went through ralan.com’s anthology calls and made a list of all the ones that interested me and pay at least 1 cent per word. I have a notebook now full of deadlines, requirements, and submission information for each. I’ve picked out about eleven, most with deadlines around early next year, though a couple have deadlines coming up very soon.

I read somewhere, and I honestly can’t recall where though I think it was linked to off of sfsignal.com in a post there, that when writing for anthologies, you don’t want to write the first idea that comes into your head because that will be the one that everyone else thinks of also. I believe the advice said to pick the 17th idea. So I’m currently brainstorming all sorts of ideas, and trying to aim for a good blend of crazy enough that it might not have fifty clones in the slush but still something I’d want to write.

This decision to write for anthologies as well as working on the giant list of ideas I already had is timely. November is coming, traditionally National Novel Writing Month. I’ve done nanowrimo twice and “won” both times. However, I think that my last nano will be my last nano. I learned I could write at length and on deadline. Nano (not that I want to start a war if you disagree with me here…), but you don’t get a novel out of it. Well, maybe if you’re writing middle-grade, because then 50k words might work. But 50k is too short for what I want to be doing. And while I imagine I could write 100k in a month, I think, for myself at least, I’ve learned what I could and it’s time to move and do novels my way (you know, a novel in two to three months instead…).

But don’t think I’m not going to be silly crazy in November. Oh no, I’m going to invent my own tradition. NaShoWriMo. National Short-story Writing Month. My goal is to write a short story a day. Yes, everyday. I’m not limiting the length, though I’d dearly like to write at least a couple decent ones under 4k words to make my life easier come Clarion sub season, but I am holding the minimum to 1,000 words. I figure if I even get six stories worth cleaning up and submitting at the end, I’m ahead for a while. And it will be fun, a chance to experiment and get some random ideas out. I’m planning on using the anthology calls as fodder. I can write the 5th, 14th, and 20th ideas I have for any given theme and then pick the one I want to send. Sounds like crazy fun right? Right?

So, my goals for October are to write up the novella formerly known as Werewolves in Space (which will be my 1st quarter sub for WotF most likely), and finish two themed anthology stories that are due by the end of the month. A fairly light load, all things considered.

November is when the real exciting stuff gets going. A story a day. NaShoWriMo. If anyone wants to join me in my insanity, bring it on. I usually write short stories in a day anyway, just not generally consecutively. And I’m pretty sure my typing limit is around 12-13k words in a day (10k is really more my comfort limit, and 3-5k my cruising speed), so at least my stories won’t be crazy long. We can hope.

That’s my plan. In December I’ll collect the notes from my first-readers and try to make my novel outstanding before the queries go out in January. Until then, time to fill up my short story basket. (Just think, I’ll get to 500 rejections much much more quickly if I have 50 stories out than 9…)

First Term and Future Plans

Heh, wordpress looks strange again. Grr.

Anyway, I survived first term of graduate school. It was underwhelming. Hopefully next term will go better.

I’ve decided to attend a couple of cons (specifically geared towards spec fic/writing/etc…). The deadline for the workshops for the first con I’m going to is the 14th of this month, so I’d better get my ass in gear. I think I’ll send them Bladebearer because it’s a complex little story and has some weird problems I could use perspective on. You can send two pieces, so I’m tempted to send in the first 3 chapters of Casimir Hypogean. I still hate that novel, but maybe feedback on it would somehow make the path clearer. Or at least give me a few better ideas of what is going so wrong with the whole thing. I’d have to write up a synopsis, however, which could prove problematic since I’ve never written one. It’d be a learning experience. Well, we’ll see how far I get this week. Otherwise I’ll send Monsters as my second piece.

The second con is World Con, which is in Montreal this year. I’ve always wanted to go to Montreal, and I think Chwedl will be in at least polished draft form by then and (cross fingers?) ready for agent hunting, so it’ll give me something to really peddle around at the con. Plus the panels should be informative and I’ll get to vote for the Hugo winners. Which means my summer will be full of reading the nominated books, never a bad thing.

I’m also, this month, polishing Space Bones and Delilah for my application to Clarion West. I’m terrified I won’t get in and I’m terrified I will. It’s like a perfect lose lose situation. But really, I want to go. I think it would be fantastic and horrifying and awesome all at once. Besides, then I could stalk EBear in person (note, this is a joke, unless you consider reading someone’s lj stalking…). I’m just jealous that she has a cat. Seriously. Stupid renting with no pets rule. Moving on… I think that the two aforementioned stories have the best shot of showing how I write. They’re also now the most polished of my spec lit pieces and Delilah is still one of my favorite things I’ve written ever. It might be a risk considering the very Christian overtones and the linear inevitability of the plot, but I hope that the characters and stylistic tones will override that and punish the reader with its awesomeness. Seriously, I like that story. And Space Bones has grown on me. I wrote it mostly for the title at first, but after about four drafts I finally feel a connection to what is going on in the story and to the characters. Hopefully this will all translate into the Clarion peeps thinking I’m whatever they’re looking for.

By the end of December I hope to have the draft of Chwedl complete. Then comes the editing and pain, but I already see things I can do to help it along. This novel, to repeat myself, is nothing like Casimir Hypogean. It’s such a breeze to write and the language flows nicely instead of feeling forced and choppy as all hell. I wonder if I haven’t written the world of Casimir Hypogean too bleak, its characters too unsympathetic. After all, why should a reader care about chars who hardly care about themselves? It’s a strange dilemna. More reason probably for why I should edit up those first 3 chapters of the rewrite and send them off for critique. Maybe the novel is dead and I’m still pining for a ghost of a thing that shouldn’t be. It’s hard to tell such from my close perspective.

NaNo Update Week 1

I’ve written just over 19,000 words and have six chapters done.

This novel, for whatever reason, is proving hella easy to write. The characters are talking to me, the setting is coming together, the plot is all there.

I think this is due in part because compared to the setting and many-layered plot of Casimir Hypogean, Chwedl is a simple creature when it comes down to it. Instead of having to bring together a city-wide conspiracy and a hodgepodge group of misfits and criminals in a quasi-scientific setting that also has some magic with very subtle rules, I only have three main protagonists and bringing them together and figuring out the motivations is blissfully simple. There is no villain to build up and motivate, no betrayals to figure out how to realistically manufacture, no complex setting built from whole cloth.

Chwedl starts at point A and goes to point B. The villain, such as she is, isn’t really evil or much of a villain. She’s selfish, sure, and just kind of cruel in a way that is Other. The struggles are mostly between personalities. No gunfights, no highrise escapes, no twisted sex or weird drug addiction. Just good old Welsh-esque fairytale fun. (Okay, it is one of my stories, so there is of course blood, death, and some very implied sex). I don’t think anyone gets murdered in this story, however. That’s probably a first for me.

I’ve already added to and moved away from my original outline. I see outlines as being much like the Pirate Code. They’re more like guidelines really, not set in stone “this is how the story will unfold no matter what damnit” sort of things. I add and destroy and fix as needed, though I try to keep some version of an outline current so that if I have the rare brilliant idea about where the later story bits are going I can refer to it later.

Stay tuned for week 2 in which I’ll probably ramble about the challenges of the great swampy middle and writing a plausible romantic thread into a story.