NaNoWriMo Wrap-up

Yes, I realize there’s still a day left in the month, but I don’t think anything especially interesting is going to happen in the next 26-ish hours.

So, yesterday I hit 50K words. In reality this is about 25K of actual words, with the other 25K being paper edits, readthroughs, tweaking, and other revision-related work that doesn’t equate to straight word count. It’s four or five complete chapters (I don’t remember what chapter I was on when the month started) which is a pretty good clip, especially since several of them required massive streamlining.

So I feel pretty good about how productive I’ve been this month! Definitely made good progress, and I’ve hit the halfway point in the story, so everything delightfully gets to fall apart now.

Something that I’ve done this year that I’ve not done in previous years is work at least a little bit every single day. This is no doubt helping with the progress. And it’s certainly less stressful than during the summer critique marathon, where I had a similar level of progress but was doing a chapter over two days a week.

Are the revisions actually good? Hopefully! I like revision in general but sometimes when you’re deep in the middle of it, it just feels like you’re making changes without making progress.

That being said, I did go through Cpts 11 and 12 with my critique group this past weekend, and so far so good. And on Friday, the group that runs the marathons is doing a December mini-marathon, where we post four or five chapters all at once and then have all month to do the critiques. I’m debating between starting where the summer marathon left off (so posting Cpt 9-14), or starting at where my critique group has gotten to (so posting Cpt 13-18). I’ll probably do the first, so people have seen the whole story thus far (also I’m not done with 17 and 18 and may not be before the 1st, but both are shorter chapters and so it is possible).

But I do need to put together a chapter summary of Chapters 1-8 to remind people what has already happened. Yay.

Another section of Across Worlds with You also needs to go live on Friday, and I still need to do my follow-up stuff from MileHiCon. Those are relatively easy, just need to do them.

And then the Winter Marathon starts in January, so if we maintain progress and don’t run into any major re-writes during the marathons, by the end of the winter marathon we could be through Chapter 22, which is about two-thirds of the way through the book. Not too shabby. We may finish this thing yet.

On the other hand, though, I’m not impressed with Nano’s handling of their current drama. The Board did send out an email to everyone so the entire userbase should know about it now, which I thought was good, but some of the language in it was pretty dismissive. And to continue to get standard Nano emails at milestones, asking for donations and acting like everything is fine when they’re facing allegations of turning a blind eye to grooming minors, is off-putting.

Human beings suck. This is why we can’t have nice things.

So, there we are. Another Nano and November in the bag, and on we blindly stumble, hopefully being at least a little productive around the holidays.

How was your November, squiders? Any big plans for December?

Thanksgiving Landsquid! (+ WriYe and Fellow Writers)

Happy Thanksgiving to my American squiders! I drew you a Landsquid in celebration. I haven’t gotten to do much drawing lately and this blog has been decidedly low on Landsquid.

I hope everyone has a lovely holiday without too much family drama and with plenty of mashed potatoes, which are, of course, the best of all Thanksgiving food.

Anyway, the WriYe blog prompt for November is: Shout out another writer!

I did have to think about this for a minute, since I do know so many lovely writers, but in the end I decided to do my fellow Turtleduck Press writers: KD Sarge, Siri Paulson, and Erin Zarro. TDP launched in 2010 and we’d been working on it for a few years before that, so we’ve been together and creating stories for probably about 15 years.

KD writes science fiction, fantasy, and some ghost stories. Her latest is May the Best Ghost Win, about dueling ghost hunting teams, but my favorite of hers is Even the Score, which is a scifi mystery and the third book in her Dream’verse series. Her website is kdsarge.com.

Siri, too, writes across the speculative genres, often lyrical stories that are much prettier than I can ever manage. We, of course, wrote City of Hope and Ruin together, which was a great experience. Her latest is Voice of the Sea, a post-apocalyptic retelling of the Little Mermaid. Her instagram is here.

(Also, if you liked City of Hope and Ruin and want more Fractured World content, I have a short story here, Siri has one here, and TDP also has the prequel Love Shines Through anthology, which Siri and I both have stories in.)

Erin writes romantic fantasy primarily, though also some science fiction and horror. Her latest is Bound, which was originally published in the TDP anthology To Rule the Stars (about space princesses). Aside from fiction, Erin is also an accomplished poet, and her Without Wings chapbook is one of the best I’ve ever read, about the darker side of love. Her website is here.

TDP has been very good to me over the years, helping me stay productive and stretch my writing skills, and I owe it all to these wonderful writers. So shout out to them for being awesome writers and awesome writing friends!

See you next week, squiders! Don’t eat too much!

WriYe and Ideal Readers

Good evening, squiders! It’s been an interesting week, hasn’t it?

First things first, if you have Prolific Works, Hidden Worlds is part of a Hidden Magic promotion for the next month.

Secondly, it seems like there’s drama over at Nano HQ. It is a sad state of humanity that we can’t have nice things, and eventually someone will come along and ruin anything. Someone on one of my writing Discords has been tracking this (and trying to get people to deal with it) since the spring, and after months of inaction people have gone to the board, and the board is Not Happy.

I guess they’ve locked down the forums while they do a thorough investigation, which to be honest affects me not at all because the new site/forums are an unmitigated disaster and I only ever use them if I have to. Seriously, they are so user-unfriendly, and maybe if anything comes out of this we can at least get usable forums back.

But seriously, people, stop being awful.

Enough of that. Back to WriYe prompt catch-up.

October’s prompt is: Your ideal reader

Which is…not a complete thought. But anyway.

If you’re an indie or small press writer, you’ve probably come across this concept of an “ideal reader.” It’s a marketing idea. Basically, you picture a reader who would love your book. You create a whole personality for this person. And this fictional person is your ideal reader.

And then you use the concept of your ideal reader to figure out where said ideal readers hang out, so you can target your marketing to those spaces in the hopes of snagging the interest of said ideal readers and becoming a bestseller.

This is one of those concepts that goes around the writing community that drives me batty. I cannot wrap my mind around it. I’ve sat down to do it a few times, for the principle, and have gotten nowhere.

The examples are always like, Mary, 45, likes knitting and cozy mysteries, so you know, reach out to knitting communities and advertise where women in their mid-40s hang out.

But I always feel like I’m guessing when I try to make an ideal reader concept for myself. Fantasy is a genre that tends to be fairly wide in its readers, and they’re not particularly uniform, and aside from fantasy-specific spaces (which tend to be for specific series or movies or media) I can’t point to a particular place, online or off, where they’re going to be hanging out on a regular basis.

I’m sure I’m doing it wrong.

Anyway, I assume the prompt is “tell me about your ideal reader,” so, uh, likes fantasy, will buy my books?

Hm, yeah. Needs work.

Anyway, see you later in the week!

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!

MileHiCon, Nano, and Assorted Sundry

Good afternoon, squiders. Hard to believe it’s November already, isn’t it? Let’s catch up.

Saturday and Sunday we did get a foot of snow, but driving home from the con Saturday afternoon was the only bad time (though admittedly it was quite bad), and I was half an hour late on Saturday morning because someone had flipped their car in the middle of the interchange. But Saturday went well–I had quite a few people come by while I was at the co-op table who’d gone to the indie publishing panel the night before (and a handful from the twists panel), and the -punk panel midday went well too, and then I had some people come by and want to talk about that while I was at the autograph table in the afternoon.

Friday and Saturday felt really nice from a “I know what I’m talking about and people respect me” standpoint. Bit exhausting–definitely more socialization than I’m used to–but definitely good overall.

Sunday was the dreaded living in space panel, which was supposed to be four panelists (including Mary Robinette Kowal) and a moderator, but ended up just being Ms. Kowal, me, and the moderator. Maybe everyone else saw the snow and gave up, I don’t know. It went decently–having that aerospace engineering degree tends to be useful for science fiction concepts–but it definitely felt a little weird.

I also had to bring the small, mobile ones with me on Sunday, so between the living in space panel (10 am) and the Nanowrimo panel (3 pm) we hung out in the board game area and played Machi Koro 2 and Tea Dragons. Also I made the mistake of letting them in the vendor room. Ahaha.

For Nano, as I said last week, I did sign up with my revision. I’m at about 5K as of yesterday (I’ll work today later), so it almost feels like cheating. I mean, this current chapter has been a bit of a mess so I’ve been doing a lot of streamlining and reworking (and also going back through and making sure things are making sense) but the fact that I’m following the old draft is making it feel easy. We’ll see if it stands up over time.

Other sundry. Uh. Part 6 of Across Worlds with You is up over at Turtleduck Press.

I finally got one of my SkillShare classes back up–the Tracking Writing Ideas one (and I just noticed I put the wrong cover image, so that’s fun. I’d better fix that) and nobody has yelled at me about it, so huzzah. It’s here.

That’s it for sundries for now! See you next week, squiders!