NaNoWriMo 2012

It’s National Novel Writing Month again. It’s kind of funny they should call it that when people from all over the world do it at the same time. National? Which nation?

Anyway, the idea is to write a book in November. We’re talking rough draft here. My rough drafts are always really, really rough. I’ve been known to throw the whole thing away and start from scratch. Sometimes more than once.

For instance, last year I worked on a dragon oriented book for NaNo. I’d already written the book once, and had the plot mostly ironed out that way, but had chosen the wrong point of view, so I tossed out the original manuscript entirely, and wrote it for NaNo from scratch. I hit the 50,000 easily enough by the end of the month, but didn’t finish the manuscript until the end of December.

It came out pretty well, I think, but I haven’t started revising more than the first few pages. We will see how it goes. How long did it end up? 97,000 words. It will probably get bigger as I revise. Unlike most writers, I don’t generally need to tighten during revision. I need to fill in all the stuff I wrote too fast to include. Stuff like who’s talking and where they are. 🙂

Right after I finished the dragon book, I worked on Beautiful Spanish Hussy. I was about two thirds the way through when Mr. Al said he wanted to do Camp NaNo, but only if I did it with him. I agreed, and put BSH on hold while I worked on a Science Fiction novel. This one was a breeze to write. I finished the entire draft before the month was out with over 70,000 words.

This is a bit odd for me, as generally I find Science Fiction a bit harder to write. I can do four Romances in a year, but rarely more than one SF/F.

Right after Camp NaNo I went back to BSH, and finally finished the rough draft. Yay! That one was like pulling teeth. Of course, now I have to go back and revise. It’ll probably be the first thing I tackle in January.

Now I’m working on the sequel to the dragon book. I suspect this one is going to get some thorough trimming. It’s coming out narrative heavy, which is quite unusual for me. Apparently Luc is a much more talkative guy than I’d realized in the first book. He’s got opinions about everything, and the whole book is written from his point of view, so it’s pretty opinionated.

I’ve also done some revision on Zackly Right, and Remember Me. I’ve got drafts for four books I intend to self-publish in 2013 waiting for revision.

All in all, I’d say it’s been a pretty good writing year. Can’t wait to show you all some of it.