For as long as I've been a writer, I've always been drawn to the month of November and the great NaNoWriMo event that goes on through it. I've never taken part, mostly because I can't write that way. I applaud those who do though, and for a while I've thought about doing something to get myself back into writing consistently. So this year, I decided to do my own version of NaNoWriMo: One page of writing each day for the whole of November.
For those unaware, NaNo stands for National Novel Writing Month. The main idea is to write 50K words in a month and therefore finish a novel. Started in 1999 by a small group of people in San Francisco, it has become a massive world-wide yearly event for all kinds of writers. (More History caan be found here.) Even back before I was published, it was still this big thing that a lot of my friends did online and I always wondered if I ever would. Although I have written a novel in ten days (admittedly, it falls below the 50K word count), I have never been able to repeat that endeavour and even then, it was far from finished. Once it went through the battle to get published, editing and all, it was a good four years before I held the book in my hands. I can understand the attraction of dedicating a whole month to nothing more than getting that long thought-out novel onto the page.
My own writing has become somewhat of a career since I became indie in 2011 and went on to add seven more books to the published list. Once I realised that I wasn't going to be able to work a conventional job, it became easier to dedicate time to writing. For a while it was on the back burner because of my degree course, but having held a BA (Hons) for over a year now, I do wonder why I don't spend more time at my desk pounding out the pictures in my head for the books I'm working on. The argument can be made that given I've had three surgeries this year and am looking at a possible fourth, it's understandable that I've not written more. Yet, I still want to push myself. Even on my worst health days, I still use my tablet, and with my nifty desk and bluetooth keyboard I can easily write a page. So, that's my plan for this month.
My hope is that given we're on November 2nd and I've already written five pages and completed a chapter, I won't be coming back to this blog post in a week and telling you all I managed my set chapters and nothing more. My hope is that by pushing myself just a little to write that one page will mean that some days it's all I write and others, I keep going. It's about getting into the flow of writing and the story, something I've not been doing much of lately. We'll see how it goes! Keep track on my Tsu, Facebook and Twitter pages.
I do have some good news for you, Blackout, Lynne & Hope, Waiting On You, and Dying Thoughts book two and three are all now available in paperback! I'm hoping to have the fourth Dying Thoughts book out soon but there were some issues with the cover and my artist is working hard on fixing those now. I hope it will be by the end of the month, but we'll have to wait and see. As for the remaining two books, those are awaiting cover revamps before being released in paperback. Maybe even by the beginning of 2016!
So, here's to a month of writing!
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