NaNoWriMo Archives - Annie Bellet

Posts Tagged ‘NaNoWriMo’

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. 🙂

Quickie Update for November

My NaNo rebel project is not going well. I’m stuck trying to figure out if this story needs to be told in 1st or in 3rd person. So I’ve switched back to the novel (the sequel to A Heart in Sun and Shadow). I’ve never written a sequel before. It’s tough writing one for a book that is published, too. I can’t change details that were set in the first novel, so I’m constantly having to recheck the older book for things. I think I might take a couple hours today and make a quickie world bible or at least a list with the relevant details. I wrote the first book before I’d really nailed down how I prefer to write novels and I have zero cohesive character notes or world notes at all (which is something I started doing AFTER I wrote this one). It’s odd to go back and look at a work that I did a couple years ago.

In other news, I sold another story to Daily SF. This is my tenth fiction sale in less than two years (first sale was in December of 2009). Five of those have been to Daily SF. I guess it is true, you just have to find an editor who loves what you write and then sell them as much as you can. I’m glad so many stories of mine have found a home with Daily SF. They are a great publication (delivered to your email! Go subscribe! /end plug).

Oh, and I crossed the 1,000 books sold mark for my e-books. Hopefully the next 1k doesn’t take quite as long, but it is definitely a mile-stone.

So that is what’s up with me. Now, where did I put that outline? Back to writing!

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!)

Failure, Rejection, Depression, and Sundry

This post will likely be rambling and a little ranty. (And apparently sappy at the end) You have been warned.

As of Saturday to be on target for my goals this month I needed 21,000 words done. As of Saturday, I had just shy of 9,000. Writing for the last few months has been very difficult for me, like pulling teeth to get any words out at all (which is why that last novel took four months when it should have taken two at most). I’ve engaged a friend in a challenge (with whole dinners on the line!) for monthly word count goals in the hopes that I can shove past whatever is blocking me. Last week, not so much with the shoving, obviously.

Alas, what’s blocking me is… me. Or more specifically my brain chemicals. Lots of quote “creative types” deal with depression and other issues, and I’m no exception unfortunately. I struggle with life-long insomnia issues among other things (which is how I read so damn much, it’s easy to find time to read when you only sleep 2-5 hours a day). Sometimes the writing process just stutters and stops. I think this is one reason I’ve always been a “binge” writer. When I’m running well I have to do as much as I can as fast as I can because I don’t know when suddenly the images will stop forming up right in my head and the mental white noise will start to take over.

The other thing blocking me is my old friend self-doubt. Writing is easy. Writing for a living, not so easy. Especially in the stage I’m in, where I’m starting to break out a bit and hopefully learning my to cross my Ps and dot my Is. Sales are wonderful motivators, but fear of success can be just as deadly as fear of failure. Things are tight right now in my home life because of the sacrifices we’ve made so I can pursue my dream and my goals and now, a year and a half into the ten year plan, the reality of the situation has definitely sunk in. We’re fine, we’re making it work, but as always I can’t help but put pressure on myself to write, do more, learn more, be more. Thinking long-term is good, but it doesn’t necessarily help the short-term panic attacks.

I almost broke my number of rejections in one week record this week, which of course doesn’t help either. I don’t even know what my rejection total is up to, though if I had to guess I’d say over 200 easily. In less than two years. What that number should (and does, when I’m thinking rationally) say to me is that hey, I’m producing and sending out lots of work. But sometimes I stare at yet another “this was well-written but no thanks” or “this was fun, but ultimately we decided not to publish it” etc and think “so they don’t like fun, well-written work. What the hell should I be writing?”. It’s a war inside between the rational/business brain telling me that it isn’t personal (because it really, really isn’t) and that I just need to take a deep breath and put the story back in the mail, and the irrational side of my brain “zomg u suckzorz and r gettin wurse. stUpid RITUR.”

What does this all really mean? Basically…nothing. So I’m 12,000 words behind where I needed to be. Over the next few weeks I can easily find another 12-15 hours somewhere in there to catch myself up. It’s adding an hour a day to a couple weeks of work. Rationally not a big deal. What does the rejection mean? Again, not much (beyond the fact that hey, apparently I write fun, well-written stories and stuff). But the depression, the sleeplessness, the slog, it all combines to make my life not peachy at the moment. I’ll catch up though (so stop planning your sushi outing, Amanda…) because I hate to lose a bet for one, and because any job has bad days, and any job I have is one that gets affected by my depression/insomnia issues, and in the end, I get to sit on my ass and make shit up and people have paid me (and will pay me in the future damnit!) to do this. Which is still awesome, any way you look at it.

So for anyone who is struggling this month (and let’s face it, November ain’t a great month. I didn’t like it before my brother died during it and I sure don’t care for it afterward either), you’re okay. Everything will work out. If you are doing NaNoWriMo and you fail one day, or one week, no need to stress. It’s cool. Think about it this way: if you fall short by 10 or 20 or even 30k words, you’ve still written 40 or 30 or 20k words more than you would have if you hadn’t even tried at all. And for all the writers in my shoes, us neo-pros who see more no than yes still, it’ll get better. We’re just getting started. Sure, we take a few on the chin during the opening round, but really, we’re just lulling our opponents into a false sense of superiority. The next story we write? It’s going to KO some editor, somewhere, sometime. As long as we don’t throw in the towel, as long as we keep sitting on our asses and making shit up and sticking it in the mail. Because that’s what counts and that’s the only score worth keeping.

It never ends.

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…)

Update on NaNo and Life

One of my classes got way behind due to teacher illness. This meant that week before this last one I had free time! In which I got to chapter 13 and just over 45,000 words in my novel draft.

Then said teacher decided to load us down with work to try to catch us up. Result of that? I’ve gotten no further in my draft, in fact, it’s been about 9 days since I did anything on it. I intend to remedy that this weekend and to make a push for 60,000 words before Tuesday. There are only two weeks of classes before finals and I have papers to write and a lot of extra translating to get done, so we’ll see if that last 40,000 is feasible in only a week and a bit (this novel will, however, be finished by the end of December no matter what that takes).

I also found out that one of my writing instructors next term is the author of “How to Make an American Quilt” which I think I read as a teenager. I know it was made into a movie, but I don’t remember if I saw the movie. Hopefully her workshop will be better run than the one I’m taking this term. No more poetry workshops for me, no sir, not at this college anyway.

So that’s where things stand. On the plus side, my Casimir Hypogean characters are chattering in the back of my mind again, though the scenes seem to be working their way back towards the beginning of the story. Hopefully by January they’ll be at the point I quit writing so I can pick up the threads and move it along. We’re only a few chapters away now with the current mutterings in my brain. Maybe I just needed to take a break and let the story get back to me. We’ll see.

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.

1 2 Oldest ›