Wednesday, November 2, 2011

NoNaNo

Not This Year
Although I really wanted to do it, I'll be taking NaNoWriMo off this time around. I'm so close to publishing Dragonfriend (doing one last read-thru of my one last proof copy) that I want to focus on making that happen and doing it right.

Side note: Surprisingly, the errors I'm finding are far and few between (yay!) and seem to be of the formatting variety -- things like a lone hyphenated word appearing in the middle of a line ("mat-ters") and some missing italics. Super minor mistakes that can easily be corrected.

Also, I'm very close to finishing the first draft of the second book in the Leonard the Great series: Giantkiller. I want to jump on that as soon as I get things squared away with the first book. As any author knows, building your backlist is incredibly important and is directly connected to building your reader base which is directly related to someday supporting yourself with your writing. 

As a bonus, last month while I was still thinking I might do this year's NaNo, I came up with a really fun premise for the third Leonard book. So there's NaNo, inspiring me again, even though we're not going to the dance together this year.

I'm relieved and disappointed by this decision -- relieved my head won't explode during November and disappointed because, even though it's a lot of work, NaNo is a blast.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, it really is a whole lot of fun. Enjoy!

Roger Eschbacher said...

Thanks, Chris!

Keith Robinson said...

I had planned to write another novel-in-a-month regardless of NaNoWriMo. For a while, it looked like I was going to be doing this around November, in which case I might have participated in NaNoWriMo anyway... but as it turns out I'm probably not going to have a chance to start on it until mid- to late-November. And that's fine. I'm still going to do it, but on MY schedule.

For me, the point is not to wait anxiously at the starting line, begin writing on November 1st, and finish on November 30th; the point is simply to write that book in 4-5 weeks. I don't need NaNoWriMo's encouragement or prizes for that. The prize is a finished book. :-)

Roger Eschbacher said...

You're right, Keith. The ultimate prize is indeed the book.

Personally, I like all the hokum connected to NaNo -- the deadline, web badges, word count meters, etc. -- but I can also see how that wouldn't hold much appeal for some folks.

I guess I have a certain affection for NaNo since it motivated me to finally get off my butt and write a novel.

Each year that I've done it, I've grooved on the nervous excitement of communal deadline beating. That's the part I'll miss the most.

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