For those who don’t know, November is National Novel Writing Month, otherwise know as NaNoWriMo. I have never participated in this before but decided this year I would. I had planned to write a SF novella, but after a couple of days being stuck on that, pulled out my old first novel, the love story I had tried to write two plus years ago, and decided to revisit it. The NaNoWriMo rules say no previous words, so this likely won’t count for credit. I have copied a few dialogue sections from the old novel, but mostly rewritten everything else. In any case, I don’t care. I love this story and believe it deserves to be told, and I’ve learned a lot about my craft since I first started to write it.
One of the refreshing things about it is the switch from my usual genres. Having crafted science fiction and fantasy novels and dozens of speculative fiction short stories since giving up on this novel, I was getting burned out. All I’ve written and read has been those two genres. I feel very refreshed to be stepping away from that for a bit, and I hope that freshness carries over when I return to speculative fiction after this novel draft is finished.
9452 words in three days. 3 whole chapters. Feeling pretty good. I can tell the structure and writing is much better than the last time, although I definitely will need to do some more drafts to work on the descriptive prose and emotional arcs. First goal is to get the story and basic character arcs down. Once I know the themes, all the rest can fall in place much more easily.
Likely I’ll take another pass at my fantasy novel before revising this one, but then I’ll have to move on to a sequel for “The Worker Prince” as I prepare for its publication. I will want to get that done and to the publisher by the time the book comes out next Spring so I can stay on schedule with that series for one book a year.
In any case, it feels good to be writing daily again. It’s taken some time away from job hunting and editing, but I need to do this for me. Almost five months of barely writing has really left me depressed and discouraged about my writing career. Professional writers can’t afford that kind of time off and if I want to reach that goal, I can’t either.
I’ll keep you informed as I keep chugging along. Whatever the case, it’ll be nice to have three novels instead of one by the Spring next year. I just hope these two have better luck helping me get an agent than “Worker Prince” did.
For what it’s worth…
