NaNoWriMo Part 2

The month of November will work a little differently on my blog, since I'll be trying my hand at writing a novel this month.  Wednesday Reads will continue (I have written them all in advance--go me!).  Once or twice a week I will report what I have found and (when I procrastinate) tips from the real writers.

So, to put it in writing, my GOAL for November: to finish my WIP.  I started it a few months ago, a project for a good friend of mine who is ill, but I hit a dead end about chapter 4.  So, starting there, I'll continue.  I have a semi-projected idea of where the novel is going, so I'll write and write and write until I can't write anymore.  Hopefully I have 50,000 words in me.  If the novel ends after only 30,000, I'll feel accomplished.  But it's been sitting on the back burner for long enough, it's time to take it out and finish it.

My secondary goal is to get more into the mindset of the writer.  I feel like most agents and editors out there are also writers.  I don't have an ultimate goal of being published one day (I like the behind the scenes work), but I would like to know, first hand, how the writing process works.  In actuality, this will be my second novel, the first I cranked out during a boring month of classes in college (never, ever, ever to see the light of day).  That was me dabbing.  This will be me writing.  With the serious writer's face.  And fancy hat.

In preparation, I read Plot and Structure: Techniques and exercises for crafting a plot that grips readers from start to finish by James Scott Bell.  It certainly isn't the last writing book I'll read in my career.  How else can I know how to tell you (my hypothetical client) how to improve your ms?  Haha. 

The nerves set in...

So, here I go my dear readers (and real life writers).  I'll torture myself for a month as you do every day.  Now I just have to figure out how to juggle my agent training and being a writer for a full month.  The writer hat must sit on the shelf while I agent, and the editor/agent/super critical critic hat will sit on the shelf while I'm writing.  Good thing I didn't go to clown school.  The juggling thing is hard!

So, writers, start your engines.  On Monday we disappear from the world!

Happy writing!