NaNo?

I had a real struggle last week. I hit 40,000 word on the 16th - a pace that would have given me 75,000 words for the month. I am not only a numbers guy but OCD, so I faced a real dilemma. The story I wrote was my ghost story and I came to a conclusion as I finished writing the outline I had prepared before Nano.

I have more of that story to tell but hadn't outlined anything. I also have two other novels/novellas I've started and want to finish, but again, I haven't done any prep work. I was tempted to plow ahead and just write, but I didn't want to waste my time hitting a word count when the words would have been mostly crap. It was really tempting though!

Instead, I decided to back off and focus on other projects. I'm working on a short story (yes, I planned to be a Nano rebel this year) and am almost to 49,000 total words. I'll win because I can't let go of hitting 50,000 - I don't have that much control over my OCD. Actually, I want to get the word count in so I can put it out of mind. I'll get back to my novels after I've done some planning, but I think now my focus is going to revising.

I am in week 8 of HTRYN. I need to learn to produce a story quicker and right now I think learning to do the revision will give me the largest efficiency progress. I might start another one of my books on week 1 and have two revisions going at once. Even though I have other stories I want to write they'll never see publishing until I get the stories I've already written finished.


So, I think my next two-three months will be learning to revise and working on the projects I have being published. I plan to publish at least two books a month for a bit, including my first novel in January. It's hard to know what to work on sometimes, because I still have so much to learn. I think it's very possible to produce several books a year if I can learn how to produce them quicker and more efficiently. If I had one goal this next year it would be to learn how to go from idea - plotting/outlining - writing - revising - publishing within three or four months. Even if I could get it to six months, then I could have more than one project at a time in different phases and produce several books a year. That's what I want.

My dad is here all week so I'm losing a lot of writing time. It's good to visit but hard not to be productive.

I know my writing and marketing are weaknesses at this point in my career but hope I can help overcome those by volume and creativity. I think I have some unique ideas and interesting twists in some of my stories. If that can overcome my writing deficiencies until I become better I might have a chance.

One of my goals for early next year will be to focus on how to market and getting my name noticed.