Week One of NaNo is under our Belts

How many of you are tackling this competition this year?  Or do you have better sense than me?

This is my third year participating in NaNo.  I think I must be a glutton for punishment and stress because I always think I need to put myself through this since I discovered it in 2012.

If you’ve never done it, you won’t know what I’m talking about.  But if you have, you’ll know the writing frenzy we all undertake.

I’m the kind of person that thinks I can always accomplish something, even if I know the odds are against me from the get go.  Nevertheless, this doesn’t dissuade me from trying.  I’m not sure what a psychologist would say about the state of my mind, or where I get this trait from.  I simply can’t pass up a good challenge and have always been this way.

Week one hasn’t been easy, but I have persevered and slacked off in a few other areas.  Of course I knew this was rough going in because this is my third time.  I did finish the first two times and I intend to finish this time, even if it kills me.  I don’t enter anything without those expectations from myself.

My advice is to keep writing until you are spent daily.  Then write a bit more, if you can coax it out of your head from someplace.  DON’T EDIT anything.  This is a rough crappy first draft you’re writing.  Polishing and cutting can come later.  So can filling in any holes.

I’m not a plotter before I write, but I do an outline and character sketches before November for the NaNo.  I keep that in a separate file to refer to.  You should not have to waste your time looking things up and figuring all this stuff out once November first arrives.  Your purpose then is to write every chance you get.  If you get stumped on a name or description, put a question mark there and keep going.

Stock up on snacks and have ideas for quick meals to prepare if you don’t live alone, so you can get that out of the way as fast as possible and get back to writing.  No TV or social media during November -- not unless you are way ahead of schedule and want to reward your efforts by taking one day off.  That’s up to you.

I sit and write for hours without getting up.  I have a huge tumbler that holds four glasses of water by my side, along with a bag of trail mix, or crackers, or chocolate, and don’t even take a potty break unless I’m about to pee in my pants.  I’m obsessed when I’m on a deadline and I feel that the NaNo is a big deadline.

It feels so good to reach some of the pillars though, such as the 10,000 word mark, or the 25,000 when you know you’re halfway there.  I’m finishing week one with 14,199 words, so not bad.

If you’re one of the crazy ones doing this, keep writing and good luck!

Turning back the clocks again

I always hate this time of year because the days are too short.  There’s never enough time anyway, but an hour is such a drastic change.  Sometimes I wish they left the time alone.  Losing the daylight gradually doesn’t seem as bad as all at once.  To have the dark and the cold is too much for me.  Today is crummy anyway.  It’s windy, rainy and dark.  I had to move my tropical plants into the garage today, a full two weeks earlier than usual.  I about froze doing it too.  I want to cringe when I think that this is just the start of the whole mess.

I was trying to think of something positive I can post about this thing that we humans do when we play with the clocks and then it dawned on me.  We writers can seize the moment here and get an extra hour to write on our WIP today.  So let’s get crackin’.

NaNo is around the corner

From NaNo Website

So who out there is doing the NaNoWriMo this year?  You have five more days to sign up.  This will be my third year at it.  And yes, I am crazy for even attempting this at all this year with all the other stuff on my plate.  But we haven’t had an offer on the house yet, so if that doesn’t happen soon, we’ll have to face the fact we’re here another winter.

I always hibernate in the cold months anyway and I love a challenge that exercises my mind.  There’s no winning or losing in this contest and I can set the times I write.  The challenge is accomplishing 50,000 words during the month of November.  If you can manage this, you’ll come out with a nice first draft for the beginning of a new novel.  I say that because I always add to the story as it’s never finished.  Then I take on the task of polishing it out.

Anyone who hasn’t tried this should.  It’s a great discipline to write daily.  Of course most of it will probably be crap, but you’ll have something in there you can use to create an interesting story.

If you are participating this year, create character profiles now and jot down bits and pieces for your plot line.  This will make it a bit easier if you really get stumped along the way.  That’s all I do and then let my imagination take over.  At least in the end I’m somewhat on track and didn’t get too far off the path with the story I have in mind.

And remember, there are NO winners and losers.  Everyone is a winner because they wrote something during November.  If you fall behind, don’t give up!  Keep going because you’ll still have a good start to a novel at the end of November.

And resist the temptation to edit anything.  Don’t read what you’ve written, just keep going.  You can’t edit – ever - until you’ve reached the end of your novel. 

Find a quiet place and time to write daily when you won’t be distracted or disturbed.  Writing should be a reward you can’t wait to get to and not a chore you have to do.

To sign up go here: Write a novel in 30 days

All you need now is a working title and short synopsis.  All the writing doesn’t start until November first.  Good luck.

Book Review for The Moon Sisters by Therese Walsh

4 stars

Interesting story

This is a powerful family tale about two sisters as different as night and day.  Jazz is responsible and looking for a way to better her life while her younger sister Olivia is strong willed and more of a free spirit.  Olivia also suffers from synesthesia, which leaves her with the ability to see colors in sounds, taste words and smell sights.  Yes, this affliction really exists.  I had to look it up being the curious person I am.

After the alleged suicide of their mother, Olivia decides to venture to the place that was the setting for the book her mother was writing and never finished.  Much to her displeasure, Jazz is coaxed into going along to look after Olivia.  Her younger sister isn’t the most responsible person in the world and never thinks things through, going about life off-the-cuff, the total opposite of Jazz who has a job waiting for her.

Olivia packs some of her mother’s ashes into a suitcase and takes off to walk to her destination.  Jazz isn’t happy about Olivia’s quest and the insistence of her family that she goes along to look after her sister, but she can drive and has an old vehicle inherited from her grandmother.  Jazz is further aggravated when they run into all sorts of trouble along the way and it looks like she won’t be back in time to start her first job.

Jazz tries to talk Olivia out of going to the bogs, but she’s determined to get there by any means.  When Jazz is taking care of business, Olivia runs off to hop a train.  Jazz doesn’t realize she’s gone at first because the suitcase with the ashes is still there.  When Jazz finally catches up with Olivia, she’s taken up with a train hopper who tells her himself that he can’t be trusted, but she thinks he’s a nice person underneath, so is willing to take the chance because he can lead her to the cranberry bogs, which is where her dead mother’s story takes place.

When they meet face-to-face again, Jazz does everything she can to persuade Olivia to come home and give up on her quest.  She doesn’t trust the train hopper who Olivia is smitten by.  The reader can feel Jazz’s anger and resentment over the fact she has to mind her sister throughout the book.

Many secrets are revealed as this trip lingers on far longer than Jazz would like.  They are also camping in the woods, which bothers Jazz more than it does Olivia who claims she can sleep anywhere.

Each sister is hiding a secret from the other, and as the journey goes on they finally have to rely on each other and decide what’s really important.

This book is written in first person, alternating with each sister’s point of view.  There’s a lot of back story, but it seems to fit.  This didn’t bother me, but some readers may find there’s too much.  The thing that bothers me more is a couple of unanswered questions at the end.  I guess it’s the author’s intent to have the reader fill in the blanks.  Beyond that, this is a fascinating story and a quick read.

Cutting back-story is never easy

I’m back to working on my mystery novel after taking a few months off to get my act together around here so I’m ready to move.  There aren’t any bites on the house yet, but you never know when that will happen, and believe me, you can accumulate a lot of crap over the years.  This is especially true if you’re like me and have explored many art mediums in your life.  I have several “businesses” in my garage.

Anyway, back to the novel.  First, I’m ashamed of myself because I didn’t continuously work on this book, although I do realize I have more of a critical eye after letting it sit a while and then reading it again.  I can see some things to change, but it’s hard to be brutal and take out a lot.  I tend to let the back-story carry me away at times, I guess, probably much like the rest of you.  I think you do need some in there, but not too much.  Finding the happy middle ground is the hard part.

I’m thankful to have two gals reading this for me and helping me along the way with their perspective as they read the story.  I can’t tell you how much of a difference a new set of eyes can make.

I’m done with the second rewrite of my first chapter.  I was able to delete half of it, if you can imagine that.  I know the rest of it will be in as bad of shape too as the first chapter.  This book is sixty-one chapters long, but of course, that will probably end up considerably shorter once it’s finished.

My advice is to be brutal when you’re doing this.  Ask if the passages make your story better and if it advances the story.  Be honest with yourself.  Keep in the back of your mind that you have to keep the reader interested.  If you can’t part with all the hours of work you put in writing all that back-story in the first place, but you know you have to cut it out to better your story, remember you can paste it into a separate file if it makes you feel better about it.  That way it’s just separate and still saved on your computer somewhere.

I have no idea how long it will take to go through this whole story, but I look at everything as a learning experience. 

This first mystery book was my NaNo project for 2012.  I wrote the sequel as my NaNo project for 2013 and I’m intending on doing the next book in this trilogy series as my NaNo project for 2014 in November, unless I’m moving and can’t write my 1667 words a day.

Of course, none of this stuff is edited and ready to publish yet, but it will be one day.  I guess I have big plans for these books and I don’t give up, so eventually they’ll be out there, even if it’s only for me.

You writers should never give up either.  Write for yourself if nothing else, but write.

Author Marketing on Kindle Unlimited

In my opinion, this is a very good article for self-published authors about using the new kindle unlimited program to market their books.  This guy has done a detailed study of this new program Amazon put into effect in July of this year.  I think it’s well worth the read if you have your books available as kindles on Amazon.

This program allows readers to pay a monthly fee of $9.99 and read as many books as they like.  The catch here is that they have to read 10% of the book in order for the author to receive payment for that book.  This should concern any author a great deal, especially if you have long books enrolled in this program.  If the books are long, they had better be page-turners.  Of course, we all want to write books that keep the reader on the edge of his/her seat, but I feel all books ebb and flow with tension and slower areas.  I’ve read very few that are filled with apprehension from cover to cover.

It makes more sense, as this article suggests, to keep the books short, only enroll the first book in this program if you have a series, and to use it for the genres that attract the most readers.

Please click here to read the full article.

Review for My Sister’s Grave by Robert Dugoni

An Interesting story

4 stars

Tracy Crosswhite becomes obsessed with finding out who really murdered her sister, Sarah.  She doesn’t believe Edmund House is the killer, even though there’s a trial and conviction.

Tracy becomes a Seattle homicide detective, making it her life’s work to get the bad guys because she blames herself for Sarah’s death.  As she works getting justice for victims over the next twenty years, she gathers facts about her sister’s case.

This book starts out slow, but midway through it picks up the pace and there are several surprises, many unknown facts are discovered, and there’s a great ending.  The beginning is about the childhood of the girls, their friends, and Sarah’s death as a teen.

When Sarah’s remains are finally found, it throws the small town of Cedar Grove back into chaos as everyone remembers the day she disappeared twenty years earlier and the ensuing trial.  Tracy reunites with some of her childhood friends at Sarah’s funeral.  One, Dan O’Leary, is a lawyer who takes all the files she’s collected over the years and, at her urging, goes over the facts.  Between the two of them and the facts, they decide the wrong man is in prison and start a process to get him released.  This opens up another assortment of problems and surprises that will change the way Tracy has seen things all her life.

This book has a little romance, a lot of suspense and is gruesome in places, but not more than you’d expect from a murder mystery.  There’s good character description and some devious citizens, which add to the story.  The reader will discover that things aren’t always as simple as they seem.

I could also picture the blizzard that takes over the town at the worst possible moment.  There are good depictions all through this book.

The only part that puzzled me about this story was a couple of chapters toward the end when the dead sister is talking.  Somehow, I think it would have seemed more natural if perhaps Tracy was thinking about what her sister would have done in the situation.  It just seemed strange to me that the sister who has been gone for twenty years would be stepping in to tell her part of the story.  That’s why I’m giving it four stars.

Nevertheless, this was still a good book and I’d like to read something else by this author.