NaNo Then Versus Now

by: Seleste deLaney

I did my first NaNoWriMo in 2007 (aka--very pre-published). I started with a bang, finished with a whimper, then took the next 10+ months to finish the draft. NaNo 2008 (still pre-published) was more of a slow and steady thing. Finished, won, completed the draft in December (I did eventually sell this one as well, under my other pen-name). NaNo 2009 (still pre-published) was like chewing off body parts to finish. I loved the idea, hated the manuscript, but I won anyway. Shelved the manuscript for a few months, then completely re-wrote it and sold it in early 2010. (It was Badlands, for those who care about such things.)

I went into NaNo 2010 as a published author, but at the time I only had one short story (Of Course I Try) out. I had a couple other holidays shorts coming in December and Badlands in February, but I wasn't on deadlines and didn't have a ton of things going. (Badlands was done on my end, and the others were short enough that edits weren't killer.) This year, my NaNoNovel soared and finished up pretty quickly. Granted, I took a year to tweak it and sub it, but that's when Kiss of Death happened.

By NaNo 2011, I had a backlist, I'd won a couple little awards. I was starting to think I was a big deal. So I took that year to write a book that I loved but I knew might be unpublishable because of the plot. (I've let it sit for a year, but I do plan to go back to it and look again.) But once again, I wasn't on deadlines. Everything was easy.

Now, in 2012, I feel like I'm finally doing NaNo as a published author. The lead up to November involved releases in August and September. I have another holiday short coming out in December. And I had a submission due in the middle of November... that I didn't have drafted until the end of October. Uh... this is when the panic-heavy music should be cued. Because of all that, I barely had an outline for Kiss of Life when November 1 hit.

I do not advise doing NaNo this way (published or not)--especially when dealing with a sequel. However, I digress...

I wrote on Kiss of Life for the first week of November and really floundered. I mean hard-core, thought I was going to drown in the suckitude. Then the second week, I took the book I finished in October and spent a week revising it. Once it was subbed, I looked at Kiss of Life and actually groaned. I'd had such a hard time staying on target the first week, the I couldn't fathom how I was possibly going to catch up from missing a week.

Then I remembered how last year Skyla abandoned her first NaNo project half-way through the month and started another one...and finished it. And it hit me--that's how a real author behaves. Writing is our passion, but it's also our job. We get up, dust off our whiny pants, and do the job. So, I sucked in a deep breath, choked on my fear, and remembered that I love these characters and their story. As of 8pm on Tuesday, I have just over 9,000 words left to write to win NaNo. I'll get at least 2,000 of those before I go to bed, hopefully more. That means unless something horrible happens, I'll win NaNo. By the skin of my teeth, but I still did it (or will).

It's weird how I have a bunch of contracts for books sitting in the filing cabinet next to me, but this makes me feel like a real author. The pressure, the deadlines, more than one of them... and busting ass to make sure they happen.

Am I certain this version of Kiss of Life is worth the time I put in? Nope. But that's what I have my awesome beta reader, Janelle, for. She's volunteered to look at the early draft and kick me if I'm way off-base. That means come December 1, I'm sending her what I have and taking a much-needed (and recently ordered) break. Said break doesn't mean I won't be writing, but I'm going to write something for me for a week or so while I wait on Janelle's feedback. Because that's the other thing this year's NaNoWriMo has taught me--that sometimes an author has to write what they want rather than what they should.

Because that, my friends, is what makes it fun and magical and keeps me coming back for more. It's time to re-discover the magic, if only for a little while.

Then it's back to work, because I have the best damn job in the whole world. <3

It's My Life

by Seleste deLaney

So, I'm taking a writing class right now... sort of.

You see, I signed up for it at the last minute in order to try to finish up a draft I was working on and revise it and get it to beta prior to NaNoWriMo. Mission accomplished! Woot! Thing is, I was left with about five days between sending it off and NaNo starting.

This was actually perfect (in my mind) since I'd just received a manuscript from my new crit partner. I had five days to turn that around and get whatever pre-NaNo plotting I was going to do finished before November 1 (oh, and take care of edits on my holiday short, but that was easy-peasy). Everything was going fine--is going fine, actually--and then the instructor sent a note basically saying not getting pages was unacceptable during the course.

Um...

Now, I don't know you about you as a writer, but I get hard-core burned out if it's all-my-words-all-the-time. I know for a fact if I'd picked up one of my other works-in-progress last week when I sent off the manuscript I'd just spent several weeks of blood, sweat and tears on, I would have been worthless for NaNo. As it is, I had to reset my brain from funny contemporary romance to urban fantasy which is no small feat for me. Flipping a switch literally from one day to the next can't happen for me.

I do realize the instructor probably wasn't talking to me specifically and the email was more directed to people who were making excuses about not getting pages. (When I finished revisions, I announced that I was taking the next five days to plot for NaNo and didn't even mention the critique-read.) However, it really stuck in my craw.

People paid for this class. I mean, I get that people pay for boot-camp exercise classes too (and suffer the requisite beat-downs if they slack off), but for some people this class is asking them to go from being page-a-day writers to being 20-page-a-day writers. That's a huge jump and it's a commitment that not everyone might be ready for when they sign up. They've heard it's a good class, so they pay their money and then O.O

As for myself, I knew what I was signing up for, even last minute. I just didn't expect there to not be things such as you-finished-the-draft-take-a-celebration-day or whatever. Maybe if I'd started the class with a brand new manuscript, I'd look at it differently, but I didn't. I finished what needed finishing and got the words plus revisions done quicker than I thought. If I was still in college, I would have totally taken the extra time for something else, even if it meant pretending I was still working on the original project.

This shouldn't be any different.

Yes, I know the instructor wants the class to be successful for everyone. Problem is it will never be successful for everyone by her definitions. Some people will never be 20-page-a-day writers. Some will only be able to maintain that while taking the class and never find the momentum again. Then there will likely be a few whose writerly lives are completely changed by what they learned.

But even if they only learned that this particular process doesn't work for them, the class was still a success because they learned something not only about their writing habits but about themselves. So, I'm going to continue to take today for my crit partner and my plotting (and my house cleaning since we have company coming this weekend that was already on the schedule before this class even hit my radar) because that's what I need to do for me both as an author and a person.

Then when midnight hits, I'm going to start writing again. I'm going to do my best to bust out my 20-pages-a-day for the rest of class. Know why? Because if I can pull it off, it means I win NaNo by the end of class. Also, if I can keep up the momentum, I can finish the draft by Thanksgiving without breaking a sweat. For me, that's well worth taking a non-instructor-endorsed breather right now. For me, that will mean the class was a complete and total success.