Lest I feel that dedicating this year to earning a “Novel Writing Certificate” is small potatoes…
Because it’s not enough to spend Tuesday and Saturday mornings driving in traffic for an hour in order to diagram plot points and decide whether my historical protagonist likes her coffee black or with a smidge of stevia…
Because meeting total strangers for the sole purpose of discovering that they are master writers and I am a kindergartner wielding a purple crayon…
They gotta throw “National Novel Writing Month” on top of it.
Did you know that novelists – the guys doing the real deal – have three to four books somewhere in progress while simultaneously coming up with new book ideas to pitch to publishers and they still teach classes, hold workshops, and market like crazy to make the money happen?
Do you know how much work it is to maintain a business social media, website, and amazon presence? No, you don’t, because if you’re smart you’ve hired me to do it for you. I run a freelance writing business on the side to pay for my obsession. That puts me one step closer to crazy town than I thought.
Me: “Don’t you think attempting to write a brand new novel in a single month will distract me from the one I’ve been trying to write for the last three years?”
Teacher/Author: “I highly recommend NaNoWriMo. Especially if you have a hard time with perfectionism.”
Me: “Who, me? Don’t be ridiculous preposterous silly.”
Teacher/Evil Person: “The idea here is that in one month, you sit down and make 50,000 words. That’s only 1,666.66666 words a day. Easy peasy. As long as you don’t edit while you write.”
Me: “But that’s what people love me for pay me to do.”
Teacher/Gastroenterologist: “You can’t keep a good steady outgo if you’re blocking with analytics. You have to relax. Just enjoy the word vomit.”
Me: Simultaneously whimpering and signing up online. My code name is Jolie Guacamole.
If you clean your house before the cleaning lady arrives, you know exactly how I feel.
And if you know how I feel about vomit, you also know exactly how I feel.
Buckle up. You will still get regular blogs in November because I love you, but they will be made ahead of time and auto-post with updates on my progress.
If you have a completely random character, setting, villain, plot twist, vehicle, pet, name, or an especially exciting way to kill off boring side characters, give it to me right here in the comments! Then tune in next month and see how I wrote about it.
Better yet, sign up yourself and join me on the dark side. *evil laughter*
“Relax and enjoy the word vomit” may become my home-stretch NaNoWriMo motto. Thank you for that and for your exceedingly cool business writing page. As a fellow ISTJ fiction writer-slash-freelance content writer (I can’t believe I’ve become a slasher), I appreciate the model fo something I could totally emulate (without plagiarizing, of course!) Thank you thank you -perhaps I will meet you one day in San Diego! (I am there at least once a year visiting family and changing up my work environment. I am often seen at Dark Horse!)
Writing Buddy! Perfectionism Pal! It’s nice to know I’m not alone crawling towards the finish line with crazed caffeinated eyes, clutching a half empty pint of ice cream….as Dory says, “Nope. Nuthin in my noggin.”
She saw him across the room, he was dark, mysterious, tall, and handsome. He looked of both class and money. Which raised the question of why the thick mud on his shoes and what was the cause of that scratch in his cheek? As the butler passed by she noticed him slip something into his coat pocket? …..it looked like it was alive but like nothing she had ever seen.
“My apologies for being late, I’ve been to the cemetery to visit Mother,” he said, carelessly tossing his fedora onto the horsehair sofa. It was all the explanation he offered but politeness forbade guests from questioning their host. He poured himself a scotch. The maid was going to lose it when she saw the carpets.
Hmm, maybe there should be a circus in there somewhere. Good place to kill/abduct boring side characters. Circuses are always fun and I loved that blog of yours!
Hope you enjoy the challenge! Excited to hear about it.
Yes!! A circus is going in! Evil clowns are too obvious. A gymnast steals from a volunteer in the audience and frames the ringmaster in a plot of revenge over a dark secret in their past….
Love it! Inspiring inspirational visionary!
A new dental school graduate takes his vision of affordable oral hygiene to the backwater bayous of Louisiana where he is challenged by an alligator wrestling medicine man and an incoming hurricane…
Loving your journey! Thanks for bringing me along for the ride. Excited to see the end result, but more excited to hear about your experience along the way.
In the narrow colorful channels of Venice, an elderly artist and her mustachioed protege are held at gunpoint by a masked bandit who demands the safe deposit key to a rare artifact. She reaches into her purse when a tourist walks around the corner…
But you *have* to clean your house before the cleaning lady comes! Doesn’t everyone do that?!
“Madre de Dios!” said Socorro as she backed quickly away from the open dorm room. Clapping a hand over her mouth and nose, she wheeled her utility cart full of cleaning equipment back to the elevator. It was going into her contracts immediately: “Excludes bachelor pads and pigsties.”
You go girl! Write away. 😀
Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess who lived in a sparkling castle full of shoes. There were stilettos and flats and boots and Birkenstocks and tennies that had travelled a marathon or two. She collected each pair when their owners were exiled to the Isle of Menifee, and displayed them on the antlers of a jackalope.