I “won” Camp NaNoWriMo! Set a goal of 20k words for the month of April. Wrote 21,683. This is the 7th Camp NaNo I’ve “won”.
I’ve discovered over the last few years that writing 15-20k words a month is pretty much my comfortable, average pace. I don’t have to try very hard to hit that number. Now, the 50k required for REAL NaNoWriMo in November… those I have to struggle for.
I feel I have finally settled into a good place as a writer now… only 23 years after writing my first novel. 🙂 Maybe I’m a slow learner, but more likely I think I kept trying to force myself to use other people’s processes because those processes worked for them.
What I’ve realized now is that every writer is actually very different. And what works for one probably won’t work for another. So when you see advertisements from some big-selling author who says they can teach YOU how to write faster or write better… be skeptical.
That’s not to say you can’t learn something from them. You absolutely can (and honestly, you should listen to them so you have resources to build your own quilt… more on that below…). Just don’t expect to be able to follow their exact process and get the exact same results they did. I haven’t seen that happen yet.
Instead, each author usually creates a patchwork-quilt process of all the processes they’ve tried to learn from other people (there’s that quilt I mentioned!)… and it eventually becomes their very own. And that’s what’s happened to me. Finally. After 23 years. Lol.
I’ve found I can generally average 500-1000 words a day during this virus quarantine (and 1000-2000 otherwise) among the day job and the homeschooling, and no, that’s not a lot. But it IS enough to have a finished book within a few months.
I can write about 1000 words an hour, on average, and that’s using Dean Wesley Smith’s Writing Into the Dark method, in which I don’t write as fast as I possibly can, but instead take the time to form sentences I generally like as soon as I write them. It also includes reading over the last few paragraphs and editing those as I read, before getting to the place I left off and continuing on from there. This method saves me a BAZILLION years in editing time, and I LOVE it… since I am definitely an author who loves the drafting phase but is not super into editing… my own stuff. I don’t mind editing other people’s stuff all day, lol.
Now, this method would NEVER have worked for me when I was a younger, newer writer. (I know, I tried it for YEARS. It’s my “natural” writing method, but I lacked the finesse and discipline of craft to pull it off.) However, as an older, wiser writer now, I know when to STOP editing. I’ve found my voice and I know when it’s not coming through well enough, or when it is coming through well enough. I know what kind of stories and characters I like (and don’t like), and I write for ME first and foremost. Not for any kind of trend, or what’s hot right now, or what I think other people might like.
I wrote for other people for a chunk of that 23 years, and it never turned out well. I’ve had the best reader response from the stories I wrote for me first… to include fanfiction! 😉
So, the draft of Bastard of Blessing (The Legacy of Lucky Logan book 2) is about 40k words now total, and right about at the midpoint. This one is on track to be slightly longer than the first. Which is expected.
It’s a bit more complicated then book 1… there are more plot threads happening and more information that needs to be conveyed, plus more characters to balance.
But so far, thankfully, there’s no sign yet of Story Expansion Virus… which is what some author friends of mine call it when you plan to write a 50k word book and instead write a 150k word book, heheh… which has happened to me plenty of times in the past.
…. *knocks on wood*….
It helps that I already have a solid idea of where this entire series is going, though, I think, which has not been the case with the other books I’ve written in the past that rapidly expanded. With this series, I already have the main event planned out for each book, and also the overarching series plot. So each book has its parameters, a starting and end point, and I think that helps to keep everything contained.
I thought at first it was because this series was “less complex” than the other novels I’ve written… but that’s not really the case at all. In fact, this series is turning out to probably be THE most complex series I’ve ever written.
It’s just that I’m an older, wiser writer now, and I’m better equipped to handle it, lol. That’s my theory, anyway.
In any event, I am MORE THAN thrilled to have FINALLY reached this place in my author journey. I’m writing consistently, and the writing is almost always easy. No matter what else is going on in my life, I manage to write. I will admit, this is mostly due to the fact I’ve realized that writing my books is self-care, an escape… like watching movies or reading books is for other people. So it’s fun and enjoyable for me… not a grind I force myself into. (And honestly… if your writing is a grind, why not just get a regular job to grind at instead, ya know??)
That makes it easy to do every day, no matter what.
That’s how it was back in the day when I’d write fanfiction. Only now it’s the same with my original fiction! And I’m absolutely loving it!
I’m excited to get this book 2 out there, but probably more excited to produce another audiobook narrated by Roger Clark… hehehe. All in good time! I should have this draft finished up by end of June, or sooner… and I’m aiming for a September 2020 release.
We’ll see how it goes!
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