IWSG: NaNo Time?

 

It's the first Wednesday of the month, and that means time for the Insecure Writer's Support Group post. The IWSG is the brainchild of the amazing Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh. Since we are all insecure and can use all the support we can get, huge thanks to Alex and this month's co-hosts, Jemi Fraser, Kim Lajevardi, L.G Keltner, Tyrean Martinson, and Rachna Chhabria!

Every month there is an optional question to spark our posts and discussions. This month's question is (stripped of all the explanation you will find here):

Why do you write what you write?

Now for my post...

I'll get to the question in a minute. First, the big question: to NaNo, or not to NaNo? That's right--November is National Novel Writing Month, and many of us like to use the energy of the event to push our work along. So am I doing it this month? 

My answer to that appears to be a great big "sort of." When I first drafted this post on Oct. 30, I was still working on edits on last year's novel, something I'd hoped to have done by the end of May. As my regular readers know, life intervened, and writing, not to mention just getting up and going on each day, has been a challenge. As of November 1, the edits aren't quite done, and that's my first priority.

Still, I have a new story that's itching. 

Well, not so much a story as a character. I want to start a new mystery series with a new heroine. She's taking shape in my head pretty well, but the story has not, except in the broadest sense. And therein lies the rub: I could rush ahead and write a story all unplanned. That hasn't worked well for me in the past. Or I could spend however long it takes to plot the novel, then start. That might make it hard to reach 50K words, but frankly, who cares?

My third option is to spend the month working on short fiction, mostly editing flash fiction into a couple (or 3) anthologies. That is, once I finish the edits on Death By Donut. By the way, I'm still open to beta readers, and I haven't forgotten those who volunteered last month. I expect to finish my edits within the next two days.

Once the draft is off to the beta readers, I can either start plotting the next thing or (much more likely) start organizing my stories for the anthologies. I guess if I'm "doing NaNo," I'm doing it as a rebel. I did log my substantial word count for today, a mix of new text and edited material!

Okay, after all that, I'll skip the monthly question. Feel free to answer it in your comments, though! I'd love to hear why you write!

 ***

Last-minute Tuesday night update: despite obsessing fruitlessly over the election returns, I managed to finish the edits, and the draft will go out to beta readers tomorrow (after I do a little formatting cleanup and write a note to guide readers in their feedback). I'm very relieved to let go of that one for a while!