November’s going to be a busy month.
First, I’m going to the Utopiales con between november 10th and 13th. Last year, I met Brandon Sanderson there and had a blast. I don’t suppose this year will be as good, but Utopiales is a nice place to be, with or without Brandon. I already took care of all the logistics, so all that remains is to go there and have fun.
Then, my actual writing workshop is coming back. We’ve changed the format somewhat, from critiquing individual pieces based on the same premises, to doing some collaborative work. We’re still a little unsure how we will deal with that. The plan right now is to discuss the plot and share the POV characters between groups. Each group of two is supposed to write a single POV and share it with the group. The discovery writer in me cringes at this process. Knowing myself, I won’t be able to stick to the outline, and I fear that the voice I’ll be writing in will be too alien for my partner. We’ll meet on november 7th to discuss the actual process.
As if that wasn’t enough, I enrolled in NaNoWriMo this year.
Yes, I pledged to write 50 000 words this month!
Daunting, I know. If I look at my mean writing speed, on my second novel, I topped 20k per month. I have to do more than twice that if I want to attain the 50k peak.
Why did I enlist? Well, first, I was about to start my third novel in november anyway. Being in NaNoWriMo gives me a much deserved kick in the pants to do the actual writing. I know that 50k does not a novel make (not for me anyway), but if I can do it in a month, I can hope to have my new novel in 3 month, maybe 4. If I compare that with 5 months for book #1 or 12 months for book #2, that’s really a plus.
The one downside is editing of “The Fifth Compendium”. Right now, I edited up to chapter 10 (people who read this book before, this is chapter 8 for you), and with NaNoWriMo on, I won’t edit a word in november. That leaves me with about 30 unedited chapters on my hands.
If I’m ever to publish that one, I have to step up the editing process, which means cutting out the writing group from the loop altogether. The original plan was to have them see the whole of Act I, so 3 more chapters. I’m not even sure I’ll bring them up to that. Probably I’ll send the whole edited package to one of the writing group members who selflessly proposed himself to be an alpha reader. Anyway, if I want to actually submit this novel in 2012, I’ll have to work hard.
I have my work cut out, it seems!
