Here we go again. I’m plugging away on prep work this month to get ready for November’s heavy lifting. 50,000 words in 30 days! 2012 was my first try and it lead to Serpents Unwound, my debut novel. This year I’m hoping to attend several “Write Ins” to meet other local writers and to help with inspiration when the writing gets hard.
I am doing things a little differently this year. Last year I was a total “pantser”. I wrote by the seat of my pants even though I had done some character sketches. This year I’ve jumped ahead with outlining scenes and will use Scrivener’s corkboard and outlining tool to keep me on task. The hope is to be able to have the structure in place and be able to simply write. We’ll see. I’m always trying to improve and I’m still trying to find a process that will work for me.
Once November is done I am already planning out what I need to do next. I have a great self-editing guide which I didn’t use last year. I wish I had. I’ll work with that in December and January to build upon or cut out scenes that don’t work, strengthen dialogue, tie together subplots, get characters to really pop and of course, try to fix grammar and spelling errors. In February and March I will work with an editor who can really scrutinize the manuscript and truly fix the grammatical errors that I still struggle with. Hopefully with all the editing done I’ll have the formatting done and ready to publish again by May.
That’s the plan anyway. We’ll see how it goes.
Follow this link to find out more about NaNoWriMo. Give it a shot and look up NevadaPaul to be my “writing buddy”!!!