I wrote something. Yay! Now what?

NaNoWriMo is over. Many of you are surely relieved. Some because they don’t do this sort of thing to themselves and are tired of hearing about it. Others because they did and now they want to collapse into a puddle on the floor. A few wish it would have gone on a little longer so they could get just a few more words in.

Whether you won or not is irrelevant now actually. Okay, winning is better, you get that high from achievement. But honestly, what matters is setting out to accomplish something, giving it your best, and being able to walk away knowing that you really did do everything you could to achieve that goal. As I wrote about before, things come up. I had an unexpected medical emergency in the family that I certainly didn’t account for. Well, that’s not true. I aim high to try to cover for the unexpected, but even then, I fell behind. I fell behind my personal goal, and even the (low for me) NaNo official 1667 words/day goal. That caused me stress I haven’t felt in a while and I actually don’t have anything to prove to anyone. I’m only doing this for the sake of tradition, and I question that every year. I remember writing my first book, my second – actually, ignore those, they went unrealistically smooth. I remember my third and fourth. Holy hell, there are some chapters out there that I swear I bled on every page – quite a feat considering I don’t physically write or print my books. (My little brother is a writer, he physically writes his stories. Pen and paper. I can’t believe it.) But I digress. Whether you got 70,000 words, 50,000, or 5,000; if you fought to get those words down in 30 days, there were emotions, frustration, maybe anxiety and fear. It’s not over.

So what next? In part, that depends on whether your story is done. If it isn’t – finish it. And for those who are still working on their first novel, or their first in a long time, if what you did during November worked to get you farther than you had when you were toying with the idea before, stick with it. If you need a daily goal, or to not edit, or whatever, go ahead. You can start relaxing a little later on the next novel. If you’re a writer a heart, there will be a next one. It’s an addiction. You don’t have a deadline looming, but some people need that.  Some people need pressure.

After you finish, well, things get complicated then. I will usually do a quick edit, and I think that’s appropriate for any novel written this quickly. I look for spelling, obvious grammar and punctuation errors, and to make sure I have all the markers for research (or whatever) taken care of. Then the hard part: walk away. I really am serious about this. Walk away and write something else. Get this novel, this story, off your mind. Then you can come back to it for the first revision with a fresh eye. You need a fresh perspective, distance, to catch small plot holes, oversights, and inconsistencies. Yes, you’ll have other people reading to help with that too, but you don’t want them to see the rough versions. You want to show even to those close to you something good, right? Right. To that end, here’s the process (streamlined):

Write Book A, shelf it and write Book B. Shelf Book B and do first revision on Book A. If it hasn’t been enough time for you to really forget, you can skip it and write Book C. Then first revision on Book B. Write a book, second revision Book A. Then you start leapfrogging through writing and revising one book or another.

How long do you revise? “Until it’s done” is the easy answer. Obviously that oversimplifies it. On the first book, make a note of what you’re revising. Some things may be obvious, like checking consistency, plotlines, spelling, punctuation, grammar. Some things you may only learn after you give your first book to an editor. You don’t want to skip this. Even if you have a degree in English, do it at least once, and find someone with references, a history of clients and feedback, and credentials. What did they point out? Add that to your list of things to look for.

Now, what am I doing now that NaNo is over? Well, I finished at 69,700 words, but I know very well that a good portion of that is going to be cut. Why? I skipped ahead and I shouldn’t have. I chose a book for NaNo that picks up where two other books leave off. These two other books are not in the same series, and – here’s the problem – one isn’t written yet. So I’m guessing about 20,000 words can be distilled to next to nothing after I write the missing book. Then of course I have another problem. I don’t want to force people to read ten other books (not kidding) in order to know what happens in this one. Okay, we’ll say six. Same problem applies. Especially when this is a genie book and I am trying very hard to not make it a series. It’s a collection. You can read them in any order. In theory. I don’t want to change that, so I have to make this a standalone novel. That just happens to assume you’re up to date on the happenings in the lives of the characters that come from other books. That means backstory. I really hate doing that.

So what am I doing? Going back to write the novel I should have written before writing this one. Then I’ll finish this one while that one is shelved waiting for revisions. (See how that works?) This novel is shaping up to be a bigger headache than I anticipated, which says a lot. I knew it was going to be difficult before I even started to outline it. I am not going to get started on that outline.

Take the day off, relax, then get back to work. Finish that novel.

A Caffeine-Induced Commitment

This week in writing . . . I haven’t done much. A little here and there on the fourth book in The Thousand Words Series, and a bit of revision on A’gust because I really need to work on that even more than Dev’s story. The problem with A’gust is that I know how to fix it, it’s just daunting. I need to just put on my big girl panties and do it, but I’ll take any distraction as an excuse and I have been for years.

Now my distraction is three books are coming up for quarterly renewal on Amazon (for exclusivity), so it’s the perfect time to list them on Smashwords and make them available in other formats. Do I have to do it now? No. There are perks to exclusivity with Amazon and I’ve put it off before. It’s not really fair to limit myself to people with a Kindle. I personally format my books to ePub for friends because I’m not available in the Barnes & Noble store. How pathetic is that? Or nice. Yeah, I’m super nice.

I’m still fiddling with final details of launching Transitions, so I reasonably could put off the Smashwords thing again. And I had a lot of other things going on that I’m not going to go into that just wore me out. (I’ve slept almost three days straight and I’m unbelievable sore, but I’m able to type again.) Honestly, I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to launch Transitions before the end of Never Ready’s promotional time, but I think I’ll be okay. I’ve grown terribly fond of Monster’s Irish Cream Java energy drinks.

With that confession, I’m making the decision to play Wonder Woman. I will have the promo on Never Ready go ahead as planned (July 14 through 18^th) and I will release Transitions before that promotion ends. The eBook version, not the print version. That will have to wait.

I will release the print version of Never Ready by the end of the month. After all, I’m just waiting to get the proof on that so I can look it over, it should be fine. (I think I just cursed myself on that.) And I’ll get to Transitions next month.

I will reformat Be Careful What You Wish For, Chrysanthemum, and AKA Lexi Frost for Smashwords. And I will research the pricing tiers and lower their prices, so yay! By doing that on Smashwords, Amazon has to match the price, so . . . you know. There are repercussions. I have enough books published on Amazon now that it should be fine. I’ll look into that. (Adds to growing list of things to do in July.)

Then I’ll breathe a sigh of relief and I will get Make A Wish! released. After that’s done, I have no excuses. I’ve put off dealing with A’gust long enough. Years. See? I’m a world-class procrastinator when I want to be. By putting this down in writing, I’m making a commitment. And The Internet Is Eternal. (Imagine that was in some ethereal, disembodied voice floating over your shoulder.)

Why Smashwords? Because they distribute to Apple iBooks, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and Sony, among others. And they handle all the major formats if someone wants to go directly to them instead of individual stores. Yes, you can download Mobi (Kindle format) there instead of going to Amazon if you want to. This is going to really mess up tracking. And I’ll have to change the links on my website. Hmm. More things to add to my list. Just peachy.

Did I Write Garbage? - Part Two

All right, let’s revisit my ongoing examination on the birth of a novel. When we last left my NaNoWriMo project, Rerun, I’d ended NaNo at nearly 59,000 words, then trimmed 15,000 when I found myself trying to regain focus. And I wasn’t upset about it, I’m still not, although I’m sort of missing those 15,000 words now.

So I started off again with a renewed sense of direction and almost 44,000 words completed. Experience told me I was halfway done. That was by word count. Reality and experience are not pals, however, something I learned last week.

I finished my first draft of Rerun, finishing at 67,404 words. I was not really happy about this. My experience (again! You’d think I’d learn) told me that I was going to lose some of that in editing and I prayed that rough edit I did in December took care of that problem.

Maybe, I’m not sure yet. I did a quick clean up: fixed some dates, checked for consistency, took care of all but one of those “Look at this@@” research notes, and handed it to the alpha readers. All 67,128 words of it. I was so relieved I didn’t lose more I can’t begin to tell you. Of course there will be more editing.

Alpha readers sort of have a fun job. They read it and just give an opinion. Well, kind of. I put mine through the third degree. Let them read the first chapter then I quiz them: who do you think will do xxx? I want to know if the end is going to be a surprise and, if not, at what point they guess or how close they get. Beta readers get the same treatment, but worse. I don’t expect alpha readers to pick apart plot consistency; check my physics, history, or math; or catch plot holes small enough for them to step over. They’re kind of your average reader and I just want feedback.

Beta readers – I require work. I’ll actually edit it and have it short of sending to my editor before handing it to beta readers. I send it to them, all formatted and pretty, with the implied request “Please pick apart this novel and leave me lying in the gutter, twitching. Thank you.”

Handing Rerun to alpha readers is fine, they’ll let me know if I’m on the right track and then I’ll fix what I need to. But I’m still having some nervous twitches about a couple of things. First: I expressed concern before I was venturing into unknown territory and I cut 15,000 words in part to get me back on track. I’m not sure it worked. This isn’t a romance. It’s closer to chic-lit than romance. Okay, not what I was shooting for, but I’ll live with that.

My second concern is: I’ve never written anything this short. I think the shortest novel I’ve completed to date was somewhere around 78,000 words. It is a novel, I haven’t ventured into the novella range yet. I actually had to go double check, but Writer’s Digest (among some other resources) still counts everything above 50,000 words as a novel. I’m on the fence at that 50k line, but I’ll go with it. And it shouldn’t matter, there’s nothing wrong with novellas. They’re the trend, they’re popular, some people prefer them to full-length novels. I’m just a little skiddish because this is so much shorter than I’m used to. I’m not going to pad it just to inflate my word count into my comfort zone. The story is complete as it stands, and I’ll wait and see what feedback I get before decided whether to permanently shelve my apprehension.

For the record, I don’t write short stories either. I can’t. I used to, back in junior high and high school, but I seemed to have lost the ability. Everything I have now that is a short story is actually a cut chapter, although that seems to work.

We’ll see what happens to Rerun as it progresses past the alpha and beta readers, revisions, and an editor. I’ve never timed a book from beginning to end, or tracked the steps, so this should be interesting.