Writing Goals: Project List for November 2015

Well, yes, I do realize it’s a little late now to be declaring my intentions for the month, given that Thanksgiving is already next week! (GULP) But, I figured it was probably pretty clear by now what I’m doing this month, and that is … NaNoWriMo! 🙂

Although, I am being kind of a renegade for NaNoWriMo this year and am editing for most of the month instead of writing something new. While this is a little disheartening, since NaNo’s writing marathon in the past has accounted for about 90% of my new words written in a year on novels, I just can’t stand this manuscript hanging around un-submitted any longer. It took me 19 months to write the rough draft, and I did the first round of editing on it in April of 2015. I have two excellent beta readers on it right now who have both thus far offered fantastic feedback, and I’m aiming to have the second draft all cleaned up by the end of December.

I will then need to go back one final time to implement a few final tweaks, mostly fattening up a bit of the culture and deepening just a few more of the emotional scenes. Just the thought of that right now makes me want to weep (this thing is starting to feel like my magnus opus, I tell you), but as much as I’ve been tempted lately to throw in the editing towel and declare that it is “good enough” … something still stops me and whispers, “not quite yet.”

Rest assured, however, that I will NOT be sitting on this thing for ten more years. Nope. It is going OUT THE DOOR in December, and I’ll wash my hands of it in great relief for a few months after that while waiting to hear back a YAY or NAY from my first-choice press.

But that’s not all! Oh no!

Here are all the writing goals I have for the measly 14 days left in this month!

• Complete edits of first 11 chapters for Blood Secret (editing job)
• Complete edits of novella Being Xuman (beta reading job)
• Continue working diligently on edits to Primus
• Purchase cover for my short story The Transference
• Upload super secret fiction piece to Patreon for my patrons

And that, my friends, is it! Wish me luck! I am most certainly going to need it! I’ve edited and been adding new words (a whole new chapter, in one case) for almost 30 hours already this month, and I feel like my eyes are bleeding sometimes. Yet I have so much more to do! Always so much more to do!

Here we go!