Three for Three

 

Regular communication resuming soon (theoretically).

I’ve been a bit busy.

 

Somewhat regular content returning soon.

It Approaches

Today is the first day of October, which means the start of National Novel Writing Month is only a month away.

Rad.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to participate again this year. Last year was awesome but it is so time-consuming and life is so madhouse this year that I was weighing pros and cons.

Then I realized: If I can’t set aside one month – a single month – to focus on writing, whether I complete it or not, I will never finish anything. If I want to write, I need to make time.

Besides, it’s not like I sleep anyway.

So the main question now is: what will I write? The two main contenders are the second in the series that was started by last year’s BookThing and a non-fantasy slice of life piece that is being vaguely outlined. I’m not quite nuts enough to try both at once (no matter what Katie may try and tell you!), and even I know my limits.

This also means I’ll be fundraising for my ticket into the Night of Writing Dangerously again. I need to raise $275 minimum to get in, and there are only 225 seats available. The more I raise (for a non-profit, tax-deductable-donation, awesome children’s literature foundation), the more raffle entries I get, so that’s cool. I was going to attempt to be one of the top fundraisers, but as there are folks with well over $1000 in their kitty already… nope. I’ll just be happy to get there.

Last year’s BookThing, for those who may be curious, is currently having red pen bled all over its pages as I brutally edit (for the first round). Yes, I printed out the whole thing and am going through page by page. I can’t edit worth a damn on a computer.

Part of my prep this year – as opposed to last year which consisted of a whole lot of “Fuck it, I’m gonna do NaNo!” – is taking creative writing courses. Two free MOOCs on creative writing and fiction, and then I was gifted access to Rachael Herron‘s Udemy course How To Stop Stalling and Write Your Book. I’m pretty excited about that, as she is someone who is definitely up there on my “authors I admire” list. Plus, she knits too. So that’s keen.

I just have to survive October, first.

NaNoWriMo: Day One

So I stayed up – inadvertently – until around 0300 last night/this morning. I wanted to get a good strong jump on my NaNoWriMo project.

3115 words isn’t bad, right?

I fully admit to using no contractions to buff the word count slightly, but overall I think I put out some somewhat decent content. Got the prologue and first chapter out, at least – or at least a short first chapter.

If you’ve not seen me talk about this before, I’m working on the expanded world found in my Flash Fiction story Counting Down.

Here is the prologue for your reading entertainment (I can kid myself, right?)