Revisiting Writing and Networking

Good afternoon, squiders! Sorry for abandoning you all week! I wish I had a good excuse but I don’t.

I did finish the final edit for Deep and Blue today. It has a publication date now (May 1) and is coming along–just needs to be formatted and the book description needs some tweaking.

(I gotta say, working on marketing material is always so frustrating. I showed the book description to some friends to be like, hey, would you pick up this book? And they generally were like, yeah, it sounds cool! Good job! And then I posted it to a writing community, who pulled it apart and hated all of it. Probably the solution is somewhere in the middle, but it is very disconcerting to have such varied reactions, and I do sometimes wonder if writing communities feel the need to fix things that are perhaps okay as is.)

(Or maybe they know what they’re talking about! Who knows!)

(Anyway.)

(I just want all the Deep and Blue stuff done so I can go back to Book 1! Also I changed a character’s name in the middle and no one, including me, noticed and it was published serially like that, so that’s embarrassing.)

I talked a few weeks ago about potentially going to Pikes Peak Writers’ Conference to network and so forth, and ended up talking myself completely out of it through writing said blog post. I poked around a bit more at writers’ conferences before deciding that they really weren’t what I was looking for (and going farther afield didn’t fix the networking issue), and then I spent some time looking at writing residencies.

Writing residencies sound great, in theory! In some cases you pay, and in others they pay you, and you go somewhere for anywhere for a week to a few months, and all you do is write (and in some cases, maybe teach a class or prepare a piece for wherever you’re staying).

But, of course, I have the small, mobile ones (though at least the bigger, mobile one is not so small anymore). I did find a few retreats that do allow you to bring your whole family (including one only a few hours away!) but arguably if you bring your kids you’re not getting the whole immersive experience that a residency advertises. But, yeah, the ability to just go off on my own for a while without the rest of the family is not really a thing, at the moment.

Also, in almost all cases (but especially for ones where you stay for free or they pay you), there is an application process. And I just can’t see most of these places digging through all these applicants and being, “Ah, yes, this fantasy/science fiction/horror writer is providing the right level of prominence and art that we look for in our program.”

(And then I looked around to see if there was anything specifically for speculative fiction, and aside from fancy workshop programs like Clarion or Odyssey, the answer was no, and those are also quite long and very expensive, and there is an application process for those as well, and you have to apply months and months and months in advance. So yeah.)

So I shelved that idea.

And then I moved onto writing retreats. A retreat is not unlike a residency, where there is an amount of time dedicated to writing. But unlike (some) residencies, there are other writers there, and they tend to be shorter, normally a few days to a week.

I think this is the right solution for right now. It has the networking, it has the writing, and hopefully it will be sort of relaxing. (Plus they will feed me, always a plus.)

I found two happening relatively nearby, happening in the next two months. I did some research and picked one, for the end of May.

Of course, now my spouse is saying he might need to take a business trip over those days.

Sigh.

Anyway, how are you, squiders? Done a writing retreat before? (Or a residency, for that matter?)

WriYe and Hacks

HaHA we have broken the romance cycle!

For this month’s WriYe blog prompt, we have: List of “writing hacks” you swear by (and some you wish would just go away).

Now, squiders, for the life of me, I can’t think of any writing hacks. So I did a search to see what I could find. This garnered me a mixture of grammatical things, productivity hacks (arguably not the same thing), and a lot of “show, don’t tell.”

Though I am reminded of the time (Nano 2019, maybe?) where I read something that said using Comic Sans made things flow easier, and so I typed my whole novel in said Comic Sans, not necessarily because it was working (though the first draft did flow great–but I suspect that had more to do with my outlining than anything else) but because I was worried that if I stopped it would break my mindset somehow.

(That’s an idea, though–maybe I should write different genres in different fonts. Or maybe the whole idea is silly.)

(Also, seriously, screw these writing hacks lists. This one honestly lists point of view as a hack. That’s not a hack, that’s an essential part of a story.)

(I also enjoy this one that has “Use metaphors” as a hack immediately after “eliminate unnecessary expressions.” Make up your mind.)

For the sake of argument, let’s say there’s not any writing hacks. Writing is hard. Every story has its own hurdles and something like “eliminate every other speech tag” isn’t going to do anyone any favors.

I can get behind the productivity hacks, though arguably those aren’t “hacks” either. It’s surprisingly hard to find the right definition of “hack” on ye olde Interwebs, but I did find “the act of attempting to manipulate outcomes based on orchestrated actions.” Basically, a way to force the outcome you want in a predictable manner.

Hahahaha none of this is predictable. Creativity is, alas, not predictable. You can take steps to improve your chances–practice, read widely, take classes, etc. But I wouldn’t consider those hacks.

But the productivity, sure. My brain has some neurodivergent shenanigans it gets up to occasionally, and so “tricking” it into doing what I want to do can be useful from time to time. I like making lists, because it gives me a way to remind myself what I’m supposed to be doing.

Other things, like Pomodoro, don’t really work for me. (I can usually get through one Pomodoro, but then I get distracted during the break and never come back to it.) Writing sprints can be helpful, but only if I’m in the right frame of mind, and then I either get into the flow (and so don’t come back at the end of the sprint) or lose my focus during the break between sprints.

So basically what I’ve learned is that if I stop, I’m not coming back, and so those techniques are no bueno for me.

With productivity hacks, they’re really personal. What works for me may not work for you, and vice versa. I do like to try new ones from time to time, to mix things up, in case I could be doing better than I am. Usually not, but hey, it doesn’t hurt to try.

What about you, squider? What are your feelings on “hacks”? Favorite writing and/or productivity ones?

2024 Has Arrived

Hey ho, squiders, I hope one and all have survived the holidays and are now making the transition into normal life in a mostly successful manner.

(I won my office’s Fantasy Football championship. That doesn’t have to do with anything specifically, it’s just kinda fun. Especially since Yahoo–which is what the league is run through–gave me a D on my draft and told me I’d end up 7th out of 8th.)

Despite feeling kind of bleh about the idea of goals and arbitrary passages of time and whatnot, I did eventually give in and lay out a general idea for the year. I’m re-introducing non-writing goals (which I didn’t do last year in an attempt to force more writing time, to mixed results) for reading (though I did read my normal 50 books last year–more details on that Thursday or Friday), video games, and art (completely abandoned in 2023).

Writing goals ended up being kind of a combination of last year (NOTHING EXCEPT MY BOOK 1 REVISION RARGH) and previous years. 2023 wasn’t too shabby all things considered, but I did feel like I could have done more if I hadn’t been quite so focused. Sometimes it doesn’t hurt to have a side project to go to if your main one is driving you crazy, you know?

So, for 2024, big projects are working the same as last year–one needs to be finished before we move on to the next. And hopefully we’ll actually finish something.

Book 1 is still the priority, but I’m 75K in (with 40K or so through my critique groups, and the winter marathon starting next week) of a potential 120K, and the later parts of the book have always been in better condition than the early stuff. Then submission materials for it, and, fingers crossed, maybe we’ll get an agent for it by the end of the year (not counting that as a goal, though–should never set goals that rely on other people doing something, that way lies madness).

If Book 1 gets finished, we’ll move to Rings Among the Stars (a scifi horror novella set on a decrepit space station), and then on to Not So Bloody Murder, which is the first book of a paranormal cozy mystery series.

Last year I think I got five revision projects deep, which is crazy pants and apparently I was very optimistic. Trying to be more realistic this year. RatS is in pretty good shape, just needs some tweaking on the ending, which my betas found a little unrealistic, and NSBM needs a little more meat in the second half of Act 2. I have some beta comments to go over there (which I haven’t looked at yet) and I bought myself a red herrings class through Writer’s Digest to help.

Anyway.

I’m adding in some side projects as well, things that should be easy to do around my revisions and make me feel better about my list of accomplishments at the end of the year. There’s five:

• Publish Deep and Blue as a complete novella – Deep and Blue is a scifi novella with some horror elements (my fav, not going to lie) that was originally published as a serial over on Turtleduck Press in…2021, I think. I’m going to combine it into a single story and release it widely. Needs a cover, mostly.
• Write some RaTs entries (one a quarter) – RaTs is a prompt system WriYe runs. I’ve used it on and off over the years to do background scenes and side character viewpoints of various universes, which has proved very useful as I go back through Book 1. I’ve traditionally done it monthly, but that does tend to take away from useable big project time, so I’m cutting it down.
• SkillShare classes – I think I posted about how SkillShare closed three of my classes back in February because of “lack of engagement” (see above about relying on other people to do things). I wonder if they got a ton of negative feedback because as far as I know they haven’t cut any other classes since then. Anyway, I’ve been reposting the classes, and have one left to put up. Then, assuming SkillShare doesn’t do anything to piss me off again, I’ll do a new class over the summer.
• Short Story Challenge – I’m out of short stories. Haven’t written any in a while, as I’ve been focusing on novellas (which can be published serially). I’d like to try my hand at some new ones. Probably set a month later in the year to do a new one a week and see what we end up with.
• New Novella Project – Last year I wrote Across Worlds with You as a side project and had a great time, and before that was Deep and Blue and Rings Among the Stars. I’m really digging the novella format, and I’d like to do another one this year, either for posting serially or publishing more traditionally.

As for non-writing goals, for reading I’m doing my standard 50 books a year, which breaks down to four a month (five two months). I’m adding in a requirement to have one book come off my TBR lists (at my library and Goodreads) and one book be one I own, so as to cut down on books just sitting around.

For art, I found a “sketch a week” challenge, so I’m going to give that a try, with the addition of working through an art book (like, a how to book) once every other month. Later in the year, depending on how I’m feeling and how things are going, I may also incorporate learning how to write music.

I’m also going to add back in a video game goal. I tend to hoard games on Steam, and I need to play through some of them instead of just buying more. I’d like to play 20 hours a month, with most of the focus being on the Steam games. (I play Just Dance on the Switch quite a bit, which does not count, and also sometimes play other games there and on the PS5.)

That’s me for 2024! For January specifically I’m continuing the Book 1 revision (the winter critique marathon starts next Monday), working on a cover for Deep and Blue, and re-posting that last SkillShare class. The other goals are ongoing (4 books, 4 pieces of art, video games) but I have picked out the two books for the challenge (a book on older pagan-related Christmas mythology that I’ve had for three years now, and a book off my TBR about DNA solving cold cases) and selected a few Steam games to focus on (two of which I’m partially through).

Hopefully this is all achievable! I hope 2024 is treating you well thus far, and that you achieve all your goals as well!

Happy? Holidays

Howdy howdy, squiders! How are you? Going insane? I may be. Not sure. There does seem to be an endless amount of things needing to be done that are only very slowly getting done.

(For example, tomorrow I will need to pick up the Christmas coffee cake from the bakery, get my dad’s present ready as he’s coming by, and probably I just need to wrap everything else so I can clear out the guest room for my mom to stay the night. Yay.)

I heard something on the radio last week that said that men tend to enjoy the holidays more than women, because women tend to do all the prep work and stressful things, and men just enjoy. And not to be a stereotype, but yes, absolutely. There’s got to be a better way to manage this, but I don’t know what it is.

I am managing to get some non-holiday things done, though. I’ve revised chapters 17 and 18 (which reminds me, I should email chapters out to my critique group for January’s meeting) and I got through all the other people’s mini-marathon contributions. (Only 2, but at 50+ pages each it does take a minute.) AND everyone’s done mine, and generally it sounds like no one saw anything major, so I’ve made a note to go through their comments next week and get ready for the winter marathon, which starts on Jan 3.

All in all, not terrible for December, which is notoriously one of my worst months for productivity. And I’m trying out a new To Do app on my phone, which is going rather well (for the week I’ve had it, anyway). I traditionally use Todoist, but sometimes it gets a little overwhelming if things are building up. I’m trying Microsoft To Do in addition. With To Do, you only see one day and you can pick what’s on there, so I can manage my stress a little better.

I am going to take next week off the blog though–catch up on some things, spend some time with my family, read a book or two, ponder goals for 2024, that sort of thing.

Have a happy holidays, squiders, whatever you celebrate. I’ll see you in the new year.

WriYe and End Times

Hey ho, squiders. How are you? I’m attempting to re-upload one of my SkillShare classes, but the videos are uploading blurry and I can’t figure out why. The originals aren’t blurry, and half the ones that got uploaded are fine. Very frustrating, I don’t have time for this crap.

Working on Chapter 18 of the revision. (There’s thirty chapters, for reference, though I think I may need to add a new one in.) That’s going fine except I’m in an occasional phase I go through where all my sentences sound stupid even though they’re actually fine. Good times. Halfway through one of the other people’s critiques for the mini-marathon.

Have lost track of who I still need to get Christmas presents for, but I hope to wrap some later which should help me remember.

Anyway, let’s do our final WriYe blog prompt for the year.

Sum up your year for us.

It’s December, so it’s That Time. And it makes for easy blog topics at this point every year.

2023 has been, well, very stressful. There was the flood in May and the tornado in June, our furnace died in…Sept? We had to figure out which middle school to send the bigger, mobile one to for next year (good news–he got into the one we wanted. Bad news–no bus.) which is more difficult than usual since he’s 2e. Someone ran into my car in a parking lot two weeks ago. There’s major personnel changes happening at work, which may affect my own role. Both small, mobile ones have had two emergencies this year (one that actually required an ambulance).

I’m just…I’m tired.

Writing wise, well, I hunted down my goals for the year. I did think I was going to get completely through my Book 1 revision, and perhaps another revision, or two! Plus putting together submission materials and actually submitting them. (Here on the blog I thought three whole revisions and submission materials, plus something new for Nano. At WriYe I only committed to two, with the third optional, and then outlining a whole series, revising the first book of that, and THEN writing something new for Nano. On my spreadsheet I had four revisions in the wings.)

(Apparently I forgot how long it takes me to revise. Like, seriously, what was I thinking? Ah, the optimism of late December/early January.)

I also was going to release my novella Deep and Blue (originally released in serial installments), which I did not do but could do pretty easily. I’ll move that to early next year and hopefully remember to do it this time.

I also wrote Across Worlds with You in April, which was not on my list of goals and which has been releasing serially since June, and I sold two short stories.

As for the revisions, well, Book 1 is going well. We’re over halfway done, I’ve been getting feedback on it which is generally positive and has definitely helped me make it better (though maybe slowed the progress down a bit), and I can see the end in sight. I can’t be too sad about it not being done yet. It will be done eventually. And hopefully this is the last major revision I ever have to do on it, though that, too, is sad in its own way.

(There’s always a bit of sadness at the end of a project, a feeling of “what now?” And since I’ve been working on Book 1 on and off for twenty years, I imagine it will hit harder than usual.)

So, hoorah, 2023.

And I shall withhold judgment on 2024 until we get there. Just in case.

Because the last time I was really excited about the possibility of a new year, it was 2019, going into 2020, and we all know how that went.

All right, squiders, see you later!

Oh no, December

Well, I can’t say I’m surprised, but my month-long Nano streak has died. This happens every year.

Well, I mean, not exactly, I don’t normally work every day in November either. I did this year, but that’s the exception to the rule. But generally no matter how well (or not well) November has gone, I just can’t seem to keep going once December hits.

But anyway, I worked on my story a bit on Friday/Saturday, but not really–I re-read what I had thus far and made a list of chapter summaries, to give out to my critique groups, for people who either haven’t read the earlier chapters or have forgotten what happened. That took…longer than expected. I think I got maybe two sentences of actual progress.

Sunday I played video games all day and was generally not productive.

Yesterday I worked on a couple of side projects and other things I’ve been neglecting, and randomly possibly solved a Book 2 plot issue that has long been a problem for future!Kit. It will need to be explored further, but that is also a problem for future!Kit.

Today is just a mess, and then we’ve got to get serious on Christmas.

I mean, that really is the issue every year. Christmas just requires…so much. I’ve got to figure out presents to give everyone, but I’ve also got to figure out enough of a Christmas list for the rest of the family so I can give suggestions to other family members about what to get my family. (The old just have everyone make a Christmas list thing doesn’t work. Oh no, we can’t possibly risk people potentially buying the same things and…um, probably best to just cut this line of thought off here.) There’s decorations and Christmas cards and pageants and concerts and special events, and yet we’ve still got to bake in enough family time to make sure we’re really getting into the holiday spirit.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Christmas. Or at least the idea of Christmas. But it is exhausting.

(I’ve yet to buy stuff for my work Secret Santa but apparently everyone else has, so that’s adding stress too. I’d like to get to it today but I just really don’t see how that’s going to happen.)

The good news is I’m far enough ahead in the revision that I don’t have to worry about having stuff ready for my critique groups (my in-person one isn’t meeting til January anyway, but I do need to spend some time doing critiques for the December mini-marathon). But it is still hard when I have been on a roll to see that momentum die.

Oh well. What’s a girl to do?

There’s normally some added stress from looking back at what I wanted to get done this year vs what I actually did get done. Luckily this year I was pretty good about it, and didn’t set myself up for failure. My goal was to finish my revision, and while I’m not done, I have written 70K on it, which is more than half, and I’ve gotten good feedback, so it is going well. And progress is the most important thing. So I don’t feel the need to stuff in a couple more resolutions here at the end of the year.

Good job, past!Kit.

Anyway, I’ve just got to remember to give myself some grace, and not stress out too much, and let the month flow the way it needs to.

I’ve got a promo with a review for you on Thursday. See you then!

WriYe and Challenges

Good morning, squiders! Still on track for Nano, still kind of feel like I’m cheating. I’ve completed two whole chapters and am starting on a third, though, so making great progress. Chapters are a little longer here in the middle of the book. Should definitely hit halfway before Nano is over, so huzzah!

(In the book, I mean.)

I realized, once again, that I’d gotten behind on the WriYe blog prompts for the year, so we’re going to play a bit of catch-up again.

This is September’s prompt, but oddly appropriate for now: Do challenges help or harm you?

I’m assuming we mean writing challenges since, you know, writing community.

In general, I am pro-writing challenge. I’ve done a ton of them to varying success. The most common ones have word count goals in certain time periods (Nano, the now-defunct April Fool’s, WriYe itself), but I’ve also done ones that are writing prompts, exploring different craft aspects, building up to certain other goals, etc.

When we moved to California right after college, I went through a few months of serious depression. I didn’t know anyone, I didn’t have a job, I was in a new city in a new state that I’d never been to before, etc.

(I did eventually get a cat, and then a job, and then things got better.)

While I was sitting at home spiraling, I dove into my writing to help. I’d done Nano for the first time about two years before, but I was only doing Nano and not really writing outside of that. Right after we moved is when I decided I wanted to write for real, with the goal of getting my stories out into the world.

But I didn’t know how to do that, and I ended up joining a bunch of writing challenges for inspiration, advice, and companionship.

Am I always successful at challenges? No. Success varies on a number of factors.

1. Challenge Length – Shorter challenges are better if I’m doing something new or something that doesn’t tie in to a specific project. I can do longer challenges (quarterly, yearly) but they need to be directly tied to my own goals and not something I’m experimenting with.
2. Challenge Appropriateness – We did talk a bit about this in relation to Nano this year. If I am trying to do a writing goal on top of a revision project, I’m doomed to failure. If I pick a big word count goal without a project in place, same deal. If I’m working on marketing or publishing or whatever, a challenge is rarely appropriate. (Though if there are marketing challenges out there, maybe I should look at them.)
3. Real Life Obstacles – Writing challenges were easy peasy until I had kids, full stop. I could manage around college, full-time jobs, what have you. And people just kind of let me. I remember several Thanksgivings where, after the meal was over, I would go hide in the basement and type out a couple thousand words. Sometimes real life gets in the way, and there’s not much you can do about it except not beat yourself up.

I’ve been doing this long enough that I can judge whether a challenge is going to help me or hurt me, and I can usually tell going in whether or not I’m going to hit my goal. I do sometimes do it anyway, or pick a higher goal than I’m likely to hit, just in case.

I think you just have to be honest with yourself, kind if things go sideways, and know that, in the long run, whether you won Nano or EdMo or whatever matters absolutely not at all.

See you next week, squiders!

A Compromise of Sorts

Hello hello, squiders. I started writing this post on Wednesday before realizing that I was a day late on my promo post and switching to that instead.

(Very embarrassing. I’ve been doing promo posts for years but have never been late on one before. Alas.)

That was Wednesday, and now it is Friday night, and the bulk of the post, which was about how MileHiCon is this weekend and how, instead of doing prep for it (and which needed to happen on Wednesday, as that was my last day off of work before the convention) I was instead descending into existential dread brought on my imposter syndrome.

But I did eventually prep at least a few of my panels (the one causing the most dread, my Sunday morning one about moon colonies or some such, is as of yet untouched), get everything together, discover that my point of sale app that I’ve been using for the last ten years was discontinued in Sept (the dangers of only doing one con a year), find and set up a new point of sale app, and so forth and so on.

Today was very stressful in general–the small, mobile ones had their Halloween parade at school, and then we had a meeting with the special education team, and then I had to go to work and finish up a major project (and everybody came to “help” and had to add in their two cents, which made it more stressful), and then I had to drive across town through a traffic jam and arrived at the con about an hour after I meant to.

But the con itself went quite well today. I got all checked in and learned I could stay and do the indie publishing panel I thought I wouldn’t be able to. My first panel was on plot twists with Connie Willis and Rick Wilber, and it went much better than I feared (my first thought when I looked at who was on the panel with me is that I was wildly outclassed) and Connie was very nice to me, and I ran into some friends I haven’t seen in a while. And the indie publishing panel also went quite swimmingly.

Tomorrow and Sunday we’re potentially getting a foot of snow, so that does put a bit of a damper on things. Fingers crossed for safe driving conditions.

Anyway, I suspect from what I titled this post that I wanted to talk about Nano. I did find my novel idea document and update it, and put it on the cloud, and cross document the other files so everything’s nicely in one place. And I added a few more ideas. For when I am ready to start something new.

And I did sign up for Nano. But the idea is that I will do my revision and count the words there towards my 50K. I really can’t justify starting something new right now. (And, of course, because I’m ignoring them, the other novel ideas have started offering up plots and characters and whatnot. What is up with brains?)

Not sure I can get 50K on the revision. The document is at, oh, 42K right now, and that’s with working on it for the last six months. (I did redo some chapters during the marathon, so we may be closer to 50K, but the point still stands.) Arguably you can’t rush a revision–the point is to make sure you’re fixing everything, after all, but I’ve put together a system. I always paper edit before I start the rewrite, and I’m going to count that as a day of writing (so 2000 words) when I do that. So we’ll see.

If it’s not working, we’ll abandon it and go back to our normal program already in progress. I want this to be the last revision of this book, after all, and if I feel like I’m rushing, I’ll stop.

Anyway, see you guys next week!

The Neverending Chapter Nine

(Which was Chapter 10 until I realized during my critique group meeting last week that I had, once again, misnumbered my chapters, since I took Chapter 6 out completely.)

(I was commenting on one of the other members’ use of fun little news clippings at the beginning of each chapter and how I’d like to do something fun at the beginning of mine, but I had trouble even numbering them correctly. And then I realized I had, indeed, not numbered them correctly–though, to be fair, it was only Chapter 9 that was misnumbered. So far.)

(We all have strengths and this is not one of mine.)

The critique marathon ended at the end of August, so I’ve been working on Chapter 9 since then, and it is STILL NOT DONE.

I was doing a chapter a week all summer–sometimes with MAJOR rewrites–and I can’t manage a chapter in a month? What the hell.

Now, to be fair, Chapter 9 is longer than the other chapters. Somehow, over the many many revisions, Chapters 1-8 have all streamlined to be about 3-3.5K. Some sort of weird magic. Chapter 9 is probably at least 5K, if not 6K. So it’s like two chapters! But not really.

(I did have the thought that perhaps I should break it up, but there’s no clear place and then it messes with my viewpoint rotation which I JUST FIXED so…)

It’s also right at the act change so that probably makes sense.

But it feels like I’ve been working on it forever. The chapter that never ends, it just goes on and on, my friends…

I’ve counted the pages on my paper copy and it’s 18 pages long (double-spaced). The other chapters were more in the 11-13 page range, so it is definitely longer and not just my imagination. I’ve done 12 of those pages thus far and so have 6 left, though the last page is just a paragraph.

But I have got to pick up the pace. Holy crap. A chapter a month! This revision will never get finished.

(Also, I’m through Chapter 8 with my in-person critique group so I will need 9 and 10 done by about the 15th so I can send them out. But maybe the deadline will help?)

To also be fair, September was kind of a nightmare on several fronts. The bigger, mobile one’s best friend’s mom asked about doing a playdate, and I literally could not find a single day ALL MONTH where he was available. October is already better (and also I should text her) just in terms of not having SO MUCH on the calendar, plus most of the house stuff related to the flood and the tornado is in the final stages. The flooring goes into the basement on Friday and the last of the damaged trees was removed on Saturday (God, my poor trees), so then it’s just putting the bathroom back together (caulking the shower, putting the toilet back, installing new sinks) and putting the furniture back, and we’ve got to pick out new trees and get them planted, but the hard stuff is mostly behind us.

Fingers crossed. Also no more natural disasters this year THANK YOU PLEASE even though they’re forecasting some sort of massive weather event this winter due to El Niño.

(Although since the tornado destroyed all my big trees I guess I don’t have to worry about snow taking off any major branches. Yay.)

Anyway. Wish me luck on FINALLY getting through this chapter. And I’ll see you later this week! AND HAPPY OCTOBER, best month of the year, woot woot.

It Comes!

It’s that time of year, squiders. I have received at least half a dozen emails this week about it.

NaNoWriMo.

It still is so so strange to me how commercial it has gotten over the last two decades. But never mind that.

Every year, in September, when the “Hey, Nano is coming up, GET READY” emails start showing up, I take a moment to ponder whether or not I am, indeed, doing Nano.

This is silly. On the years that I am doing Nano, I generally have determined my intention to do so on my own before this point, and I’ve also, you know, picked a project and have outlined the necessary prep work and my timeline for said prep work. Or done said prep work! Depending on the project, of course.

On years that I am probably not going to do Nano, I have completely forgotten it exists until someone or something brings it up.

(I did my first Nano in 2003, did nine years straight, and have done it on and off over the past decade when it fits in my schedule.)

So, seeing how the emails surprised me, I am probably not doing Nano this year. But my brain still insists we sit and think about it anyway.

I don’t have anything in the prep stages right now. The last Nano I did was 2021, where I wrote most of what would become Hallowed Hill. I did do 2020 as well (the first time I’ve ever finished a draft during Nano itself, doing my cozy mystery), and 2019 (World’s Edge, fantasy). I wrote Across Worlds with You (serial, going up monthly at TDP) in April and haven’t spent any time on prepping any other stories since then.

So. Nothing in the wings, as it were.

Last year I thought I’d use the Nano momentum to get somewhere on my Book 1 revision. This did not work. (I did go to the Kickoff party and make myself sick by drinking coffee after 10 pm. -100/10, do not recommend.) While, in general, you can make and track projects on the Nano website, you cannot actually track non-standard Nanos during Nano.

And I’m still in the middle of this revision (well, actually in the middle. Last year Hallowed Hill had come out in October so I was a bit in recovery mode and hadn’t really started). No reason to think that anything is going to be different this year.

But part of me really wants to do it. To come up with a new story, and pound out 50,000 words, and see what happens.

This is irresponsible. And, as I mentioned before, I don’t really have any stories waiting to be written at the moment. So I would like to say, no, no Nano for me, unless I can figure out a way to leverage it for revision. (Also not a great idea because revision needs thought and intention, and Nano relies on chaotic creativity.)

But there is always a small chance that I will think of something, and I will really want to do it, and that I will jump in feet first come November.

Small.

But there.

Anyway. I can’t believe we’re a week out from October, the best month of the year. Where has the year gone?

See you next week, squiders!