novel writing Archives - Annie Bellet

Posts Tagged ‘novel writing’

Cha-cha-changes

I’m working on compiling the data and figuring out how to make nice graphs and stuff for a year-end wrap-up post. Meanwhile, I figured I’d post about the changes that will happen here on this blog for 2012.

First, I won’t be posting monthly ebook and writing stats. The numbers I’ve been posting aren’t the final numbers anyway since Smashwords doesn’t report montly for places like Apple, Sony, etc. I’m going to switch to posting the ebook sales stats on a quarterly basis so that I can post the real numbers and have 3 months of data available to talk about.

I won’t be posting the writing stats because 1) I get too much flak for my word counts and 2) I’m switching to project goals more than word count goals. I’ll post when I have projects completed, though most of what I’m planning to write next year won’t be under this pen name. I’m also going to try to put together some coherent thoughts about writing series. But no word counts except in the “writing goals and progress bar” section, which I’ll update at the completion of each project. That section will also only have final wordcounts. No more counting words I write and then discard or delete. I’ve fallen into some bad habits with second-guessing myself and throwing out whole unfinished manuscripts and it has to stop. I’m aiming for consistent, completed work next year.

The serialization of my cyberpunk thriller Casimir Hypogean will resume in January on Mondays. I am also resuming the Neo-pro Interview series on Thursdays.

So to sum up: no word counts here (maybe on twitter), quarterly sales updates, and both the novel serial and the interviews will resume in January.

In other news, I sent in my final Writers of the Future entry. Pro-ing out is bittersweet. While I can hope for a Hollywood ending where I magically win my final quarter of eligibility, I’m betting on an Honorable Mention. It would be a humorous end to my WotF stint.

Goals for the New Year (2012)

It’s that time of year again, I guess. I’ll be doing a summary of this past year around the 30th or so, along with a look back at least year’s goals and how I did.

But as the year draws to a close, I am looking forward and planning what I want to do next year. This last year has seen a lot of changes in my life, in my writing, and in how I am approaching my career. My goals for next year reflect those changes, I think.

One of the shifts is going to be away from sending novels to publishers. I’ve decided to not send anything this next year and instead focus on publishing my work myself. My preliminary experiments with self-publishing this year have been pretty good (much better than the nothing I expected) and I want to see what happens when I make it a focus. I’ll be continuing experimentation, of course, including putting up a few things in the new KDP Select program. I also have some genre and length experiments planned.

Another shift is going to be toward longer work and away from short fiction. This doesn’t mean I won’t write short stories, but many of the ones I have planned this year will go up as ebooks instead of out to markets. I do have a challenge planned for May which is all short fiction. I’ll get into that later. While it is cool to be eligible for SFWA and nice to collect the checks that come with selling short stories, I don’t see them paying my rent. My goal for the new year is to keep 10 stories on the market at all times, a big drop from my submitting high of nearly 40. I figure 10 is enough to stay visible and keep up the habit of sending work out without requiring much time or upkeep on my part.

So here are the writing goals:

Novels: Five crime novels (Books 2 and 3 of one series, Books 1-3 of another), one fantasy novel (Remy Pigeon book 1), and books 2 and 3 of the Lorian Archive (Casimir series). I will also finish serializing the first Lorian novel (Casimir Hypogean). I’ve got a cool surprise planned with those and the full series should be published by June.

Novellas: Four YA romances and seven adult contemporary romances.

Short stories: 50 total short stories written. 31 of these will be during the month of May. In May I turn 31, May has 31 days, so it is fate, really. I’m going to write 31 in 31 for my 31st b-day. Sounds fun! These stories will be a mix of SF/F which I will submit to markets and romance/erotica which will go straight to ebook.

That’s it. Much of this will be under pen names, of course. Officially, Annie Bellet is only writing maybe 25-30 short stories and 3 novels this year. It’s fun running multiple careers, if a little crazy-making at times. Thank god for spreadsheets!

The crime novels will run between 65k and 75k words each. The Remy novel will be about 80k words. The Lorian books will be between 80k and 90k. With the novellas, I’m aiming for 25k to 30k words apiece. Short stories will count as long as they are over 2k words minimum and under 15k maximum (anything over 15k will get put up as an ebook novella).

Total predicted word count: 1,112,000 words.

Which looks terrifying. It isn’t. Let me break it down. I write about 1,000 to 1,200 words per 45 minute session (if you don’t know what I’m talking about with the sessions, see my post on productivity here). My word count goal for 2012 works out to about 700 hours of work. Not insignificant, but not terribly much, either. For perspective, if I worked 40 hours a week, it would take 18 weeks or so to finish those 700 hours of work (yep, people with a full-time job work more than 700 hours every 5 months).

But I’m lazy. I love to read, play videogames, hang out with friends, and I tend to need time to myself to let writing stuff sort its self out. I don’t want to work 40 hours a week. I don’t want to work everyday either. So I made a plan which allows for over two months off. I’m planning to write 290 days out of the next 366 (woo, leap year!). I’m allowing myself plenty of days to be stressed out, for life shit to happen, for me to get sick or get stuck (though that rarely happens when I’m working on multiple projects).

So how hard will I have to work on those 290 days I do choose to show up to my job? I’ll need to average about 3900 words a day. That’s 3 hours of work (4 “sessions” with my hourglass) most days, maybe a little more if I’m starting something new or going through a tough spot in the murky middle of a novel.

There is my plan. I debated taking a picture of my calendar (I print off calendar pages and do a color-coded goals thing for each month so I can visually see when stuff is due), but I don’t think I could get the whole thing into a frame. Probably for the best, too, since while I’m fairly sure I’ll finish the things I want to finish, I want the freedom to move projects around if I get stuck on something or if something cool happens.

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!

I Really Should Post…

I keep staring at the blog, knowing I should post *something* new because it has been over a week. But what I really really really want to post about, I’m not allowed to talk about yet. This is one of the downsides to being a writer, I guess. Sometimes really cool things are going on and you just can’t say a word about it until you have someone else’s okay. Grr. So yeah, how’s that for a tease? I have pretty BIG news (at least, I think it is a pretty big thing) and I can’t share it. Yet. I will as soon as I can.

So… what to talk about? Mostly life lately has been finishing up Avarice (also known as the Law & Order with swordfights book 1) and outlining a few other projects (a series of eight romance novellas I’m writing). Hopefully, Avarice will be off to an editor and my first readers at the end of next week. This weekend I’m going to write my Q2 entry for WotF. Next weekend I’m going to write a steampunk short story to submit to the Mammoth Book of Steampunk and finish doing research for another project I probably shouldn’t talk about yet.

Because of that other thing I can’t talk about (the BIG thing), I’m probably going to rearrange my novel schedule for this year as well. And I’ve been looking into things like Kickstarter and debating doing a project for that and seeing if I could fund it that way. The Casimir trilogy might work for it, now that I’ve solved the POV issues in the first book and can write it in a way that makes sense. If it didn’t get funded I could always serialize it here on my blog and then do an ebook/POD version later. I think the trilogy has great potential, so we’ll see.

So yeah, crappy little update, sorry. I’ll be getting another interview or two up in the next few weeks. I’ll also post the new project schedule once I’ve got it hammered out. But hey, update!

Now I better go write…

Gotta Know When to Fold’em

To date this month, I’ve written just under 60,000 words. Most of that was on my SF novel project. However, nothing seemed to be coming together with the novel and I kept throwing out whole scenes and chapters and starting again and again trying to make the plot gel. I kept doing this until the fun was gone and all I could do is sit and write and then delete and try again and hate every second of it.

So I’m sort of quitting that novel for now. Not forever. Just for now. It’s a complex plot, more involved with more POVs and more threads than I’ve ever tried to write before. Which is a good thing, since I think it’s healthy to stretch my writing muscles and make myself deal with something I’m weaker on like complicated plotting. But beating myself up about it not coming together wasn’t helping anything.

It’s really hard for me to admit I need to take a step back from this project. I follow Heinlein’s Rules, after all. Rule 2 is “finish what you write”. When stepping away from this, I had to ask myself honestly if I wanted to put it down for now because that’s the healthy thing to do? Or am I just walking away because this is difficult? It’s one thing to set something down and let it percolate a little more. It’s another to start forming a habit of dropping a project the moment it gets rocky. I don’t want to form a habit of not finishing things, because nothing will kill a writing career faster than not finishing, except maybe not starting. (If I don’t start, I can’t finish, if I don’t finish, I can’t submit, if I don’t submit, I can’t sell…see?)

So I’m making a compromise with myself. I’m stepping back from this novel. I’m still going to keep up my writing streak and go for my necessary 3,000 words a day and a short story on weekends (the numbers I need to hit my annual goals). And I’m designating Mondays as the day to work on this novel (minimum one page/250 words). If I have to just write it scene by scene and take 40 weeks to finish, I’ll finish. Meanwhile, the rest of the days will be devoted to other projects that I feel more comfortable with. I figure that this is a good compromise. I’m not quitting this novel entirely, but I’m giving myself breathing room on it while hopefully continuing to develop my skills enough that the sort of complicated plot I want to construct here will become an easier thing for me. I’m tired of second guessing myself and deleting words and basically letting my critical voice eat away at me. I’m a better writer than that and I should know better.

So that’s what’s up with me right now. I’m turning to short stories while I get a couple of novels formatted for e-publishing and then I’ll be back to novel writing in March (working on a fantasy novel with a nice straightforward quest/romance plot and only one or two POVs, thank god).

I’ve fallen behind on the Write 1/Sub 1 challenge by 3 short stories, so I intend to catch up this week and next. Also next week I have two workshops back to back, so I think that will help recharge my batteries and be really interesting and amazing as always (but especially with the changes in the industry right now… being around multiple professional writers for an entire week is going to be very, very educational).

Quickie Preview

Want to see what I’m working on?

Here’s a hint:

Now, I have to get back to it. (This novel is going out to NY publishers while I finish the two sequels, so it might, if it sells, never make it to e-pub, but I had a cover made because visualizing something done helps me get it done. Yeah, I’m weird). Besides, this is awesome and I got almost 2,000 words written while my designer and I talked back and forth about it through the middle of the night.

15 Days

This novel (currently standing at 7,300 words) is due on the 15th of this month. 15 days. (I’m shipping out the query package tomorrow). I need about 72,000 words more to have it be a decent (re: marketable) length.

15 days. 72,000 words. 4,800 words a day. Go!

So yeah, I’ll probably be fairly absent from my blog for the next two weeks. But some cool things are coming (more interviews, a fantasy novel released via Doomed Muse Press). Meanwhile, I gotta write.

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!

(More) Things I Learned about Novels

The novel is finished. It’s the third one I’ve written (well, that I count, because the early attempts were just that…attempts).

This novel kicked my ass. I don’t think I’ve ever found a writing project to be so difficult before. But I learned some valuable lessons.

1) In the future when choosing to write a novel in a genre I’ve never so much as tried writing a short story in, allow more time than I think I’ll need. A lot more. Like twice as much or better. This will be very important to keep in mind if I’m ever under contract, because I’ll need to allow for a further out deadline than I might otherwise.

2) Just because a book has a lot going on and multiple points of view doesn’t mean it will be long. I figured that once I added a third semi-major view-point character that I’d be good on the length problem. No the case (though closer than the book would have come otherwise).

3) Fast pacing doesn’t mean skipping description. I think I also finally started to grasp the idea that “setting is character opinion” better in this book, so even if the rest of it is a giant fail, I got to practice pacing and setting.

4) It doesn’t have to be good, because frankly, in the middle of a book, I don’t even know what good is anyway. All I can see is the thousands of words standing in the way of finishing and the giant mess that might be on the page behind me. Done is good. Done is my new definition of good.

So. That’s over. Now, if my brain will stop trying to write sequels, I’m going back to short fiction and working on the e-book project until the end of the year. I miss short fiction. Being able to begin and end something in a single session sounds like heaven right now. And I’ve got five (yes…five! I’m so behind on admin work) stories that need to go out to markets.

As for the finished book, I have no idea. It’s being workshopped this next weekend and the query will go out to editors. I’ve given it to a couple first readers as well. Whenever they get back to me is when I’ll drag it out into daylight again and see about adding enough words (5-7k should do it) to make it commercially viable. Unless it gets a full request before then, in which case I’ll go into panic mode and do whatever needs doing at that point.

By the Way

My story “Insect Effect” is up in the Autumn issue of Contrary magazine, you can read it here.

I’m nearly done with my thriller novel, so things will be quiet for the next few days while I make a final push on it and hopefully find time to edit for my dyslexia before sending it out to first readers and for the workshop.

I’ll be back with a post or two whenever I finish. Until then… so long, Internets 🙂

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