Rolling Up the Next Idea

It’s near the end for the Crazy Train.  Today is the last day that people will enough the days and nights of literary abandon, and either hold up their arms in confident victory, or curse the fact that, once again, they didn’t make their goal for one reason or another.

Either way, you did what you wanted for this ride.  The real truth is, what are you going to do next?

I have some interesting feelings concerning NaNo.  It’s always good to have goals when you’re writing, because if you say, “Oh, I’ll finish this when I finish this,” then you may just find yourself hanging out on your computer–or however you write–putting down a word here, and a word there, and thinking, “Oh, yeah:  this is good” . . . and five years later you’ve got twenty thousand words in the bank.  You’re finished.  Maybe not in the time frame you’d imagined, but you’re done.

Take it from the voice of procrastinating reason:  if you write one novella every few years, reaching your goal of becoming a published writer might not only take a bit of time, but you might want to consider how slowly those payments are going to reach you.

I’ve said before that a story will end when it ends, that it’s difficult to say, “Oh, thirty thousand will do this,” when you’re putting it together in your head.  Maybe once you’re putting chapters together (as I do), you’ll get an probable idea of how long a story will run, but getting the exact number isn’t possible until you’ve seen you word counts for chapters, and you can start doing some Nate Silver-style number crunching.

This is what I did with my NaNo Novel:  once I saw the average count for my first ten or so chapters, I was able to see where the total was heading.  I started out saying that the story would probably run sixty thousand words; by the time I was a couple of chapters into Part Two, I revised that to sixty-five thousand.  I ended up at sixty-nine thousand, which means I’m happy, because it’s not an all-too difficult chore to get the count up over seventy thousand, and make the story a bit more presentable to a publishing company, should I decide to send it out instead of self-publish the work.

The issue I have with NaNo is that is sets your novel up as something that you must do with a certain word count by this date, or . . . well, the “or” is rather nebulous, but it leave one with the feeling that you’ve lost something.  People who write all the time know this isn’t the real way of the world, but you still see people come onto a forum and announce in a somewhat dejectedly post that they’ve failed, that they aren’t going to make their word count.

Well, whoopty do.  If you’re looking at this as a contest, and that you had to reach that fifty thousand word count otherwise you couldn’t treat yourself to ice cream today, then yeah:  it’s gonna bum you out.  If you look at it as, “Okay, I’m at forty-five thousand, but I’m going to need another thirty to finish this off, I’ll jack that out in the next couple of weeks–”, then you’re on the right path.

I’ve done NaNo two years in a row because I want that challenge of getting a novel out in thirty days.  I’ve “won” both times, but NaNo isn’t the end.  I edited my last NaNo Novel and sent it out, and I’ll get around to editing this one and doing something to get it to “my fans,” however crazy that sounds.

November isn’t a beginning and ending, all conclusive.  If you’re writing, then you’re jumping on the Crazy Train to pound out a story, get that first draft, and then either kick back for a few days before you pull back into the station–or jump off somewhere so you can hoof it to a nice diner for lunch with some friends, and miss all the hair pulling and frantic moaning that comes from trying to sprint your ass to that fifty thousand word finish line.

It’s not about the finish; it’s about moving forward all the time.  It’s about thinking of your next project, be it a story to edit, or a getting a submission ready, or writing something new.  It’s always about what’s next–

Not what’s going on.

That will take care of itself.

Two For Two

There usually isn’t anything important about 18 November–though Jim Jones and a few hundred of his craziest followers killed Congressman Leo Ryan on this day, then decided to make the phrase, “Drinking the Kool-Aid”, part of our lexicon, even though they were drinking Flavor Aid–but for me, it was another day of work, fun, pleasure, and writing . . .

It’s also the day that I pushed my story, Kolor Ijo, over the fifty thousand word total, thus winning NaNoWriMo for a second time.

Two for two, so to speak.  I won this last year, when I wrote Her Demonic Majesty, and now again this year.  Do I get extra ice cream now, because I’ve written over one hundred thousand words in two consecutive NaNos?  I mean, I should get something, right?

It’s actually a bit interesting.  Demonic Majesty ran eighty-six thousand words after the final edit.  Kolor Ijo is going to run about sixty-five thousand words, so ad it up and–yeah, one hundred and fifty-one thousand words written within thirty days over two years.

In terms of production, I’d have to say November has been my best.  Though I’ve not finished the current novel, I will, and it’ll join my growing collection of literary masterpieces.  The urge to write more stories is there, but something’s missing–

I want them to get out there, to be found, to sell, to be read.

More than anything, I want to be read.  There is a feedback loop in this business, where you do something, have other people take it into their mind, absorbing it, then sometimes telling you what they thing of your effort.  Sometimes it’s a good reckoning  and you feel great about what you do.  Other time they go on about how you suck, and you can either wallow in misery over it, or kick it away and move on.

I’ve had this conversation with others, weighting the “exposure versus publication” values, deciding out what you want to do with your body or work.  I’ve been writing for a while, though most of the time I was spending my time putting stories together, then throwing them up on a website for others to read.  Sometimes there was feedback:  most of the time, there was none.  When you’re posting your work for free, feedback is your currency, so if no one has an opinion on your work, you’re not getting paid doubly so.

Now I have two novels created during the month of NaNovember.  One is out being considered for publication, and the fingers are so crossed it makes it difficult to write.  When I’ve finished Kolor Ijo, I’m likely going to self publishing it, though I may just send it out to a few houses as well.  There is a reason for self publishing, however:  I have to ebooks stories out now, and perhaps this new story will draw people to my others.

2012 was about the writing, getting better at my craft.  2013 is going to be about getting noticed, getting out there, getting published.  I can write all the stories I want, but if they aren’t seen by anyone, did I actually write them?  Do they actually make an impression on people if they are sitting on a hard drive somewhere, unseen and unloved by anyone save me?

Money is nice, but I want people to enjoy my stories.

Maybe by the time I’m finishing my third NaNoWriMo, I’ll have at pleasure.