NaNoWriMo, Planning Ahead, and IWSG

And November crawls to a close. For the second time ever, I stalled out before 50K. I'm okay with this. I've won far more than my fair share of NaNos. Too much stress this year, overtime, overbooked, and very little sleep. I've been perpetually exhausted for months. So at 35K, I found peace with just letting go. I'll get back to the story at some point. It was going well and I was enjoying it. Frayed, being urban fiction, is something totally different than what I've written before and I'd like to see how this emotionally charged story wraps up.

On deck for December: wrapping up Spindelkin on Kindle Vella. The story is done, it just needs a bit of editing and then getting the second half of the novel posted. Click the cover off to the left if you'd like to give this YA dark fairy tale a try. The first three chapters are free. Also on the agenda: sleep, quiet time, recharging the internal battery, and copious amounts of ice cream and hot chocolate.

January will be devoted to making a few minor tweaks to my current novels, taking inventory for events for the new year, and finalizing my book signing schedule. At them moment, it's looking like 28 weekends. Cutting that to 26 is ideal, but we'll see. I'll be focusing on Renaissance Fairs, Comic Cons, and larger art festivals in 2022. 

February is my scheduled month to dive into the last edits of Seeker: Book 4 of the Narvan. I hope to have it completed by April/May. 

Beyond that, I intend to get Spindelkin out in print by fall or it may wait until spring 2023. No crazy five book publishing plan for 2022.  Is any of that subject to change? Sure, my motivation goes in spurts and sometimes I just have to roll with it, but at the moment, my motivation is declaring a well-deserved vacation.

Books make great gifts! You can purchase signed copies of all of my books and have them shipped directly from me to you by clicking on the "Buy Signed Copies" tab at the top. 

If you're not familiar with 

the Insecure Writers Support 

Group, check it out here 

and find links to all the other 

participating writers.

And now to this month's Insecure Writer's Support Group question: In your writing, what stresses you most and what delights you?

Not a whole lot stresses me with writing. There's plenty of that outside of my fingers on keyboard. Usually writing is my happy place. But in the spirit of answering the question, I'll go with getting through the middle. Stories always start out with a sort of manic energy, when you're full of ideas and excitement about seeing this new word baby flow on to the page. But that wears off. It can be easy to wander off to other new projects or begin to doubt that you're on to something worthwhile for all the time you're spending on it. If there's anything I've learned in all the novels I've written, or started writing, the middle is where I trail off. If I can get past that 50 to 60% point, we're golden. 

Delights me? Seeing a story come together, when the dots connect, the plot threads tighten, the characters come alive. There's some of that in the first draft to be sure, but a lot of the most gratifying moments happen in edits, once the whole story is in my head and I can see how to pull it together tighter, and add those emotional or detailed scenes that I breezed over in the first draft. There's a lot of delight in writing. Thankfully. That's why we keep doing it, isn't it? Or maybe we're just mad. :)