Like many other people around the world, I wrote the first draft of a 50,000 word novel in November.  This is the third year I have done so, and 2009 in particular gave me an extra boost to dig into revision of other works after I hit my required word count.  I had been in a bit of a funk for the past few months with my writing.  NaNoWriMo gave me the permission to drop all of my excuses and just write.

No inner editor.

No wondering if I could sell the work.

No complaining to myself that I was too busy to write.

Starbucks made some serious money from me last month.  I personally contributed to helping end the recession by drinking lots of coffee and eating lots of coffee cake.  I completed draft one of this year's NaNoWriMo novel by November 20th.  It's the second work in a series I've had my hands in for awhile.  November 21st began my descent into serious revision of book one.

Another toy that helped liberate me from my inner editor this past November was writing on an Alphasmart.  I didn't have to look at the squiggly lines in Microsoft Word telling me I had misspelled words.  I plowed ahead and wrote as if typos didn't exist. 

Typos don't exist during NaNoWriMo in the same way that calories don't exist in December.

Now that it is December and typos exist again, I'm in the delightful process of extracting my plot from the garble I typed.  I ran it through a spell check and nearly 10% of the typos were strange enough that I had no idea what word I was trying to type on the Alphasmart.  The tedium of fixing my NaNoWriMo is a battle I'm looking forward to in the latter half of December and into January.

I wouldn't have it any other way.  :)

Tags: Jen Bluekissed | NaNoWriMo | motivation | revision

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I've been incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to write short stories for Ravenous Romance's anthologies.  One of the things I love about short stories and the ebook market in general is the quick turn around time from turning in the story to when it goes into electronic print.  As I reflect that I began writing shorts for publication in November of 2008 and I already have stories in Power Plays, Experimental, Ambrosia, and Sweaty Sex and have received acceptance into the upcoming Rekindled, DILF, and Women of the Bite anthologies, I can't help but have warm fuzzies.  RR was the first publisher to which I submitted.

I'm still plugging away at some longer works.

All of my reflection has caused me to realize how important studying the craft of writing is to success.  As writers, we're all told that writing is only one piece of the puzzle to success.  There are marketing, blogging, freebies, queries, proposals, building a fan base, social networking, commenting on other people's blogs, building a platform, and endless other tasks to complete.

I agree that all those things are important, but experimentation, writing, rewriting, and paying attention to my mistakes couldn't be more important.  Sure, I write a dud every now and again.  Nobody receives acceptances 100% of the time.  My duds are fermenting into other pieces altogether.  Dud wine can be perfectly sweet after the pieces morph into something else altogether!

On a side note, I recently searched google blog search (www.blogsearch.google.com) using the world "erotica."  My personal blog today showed up on the first page as the 8th result out of 766,414 hits for the word erotica.  I'm thrilled that jenbluekissederotica.blogspot.com is doing well.  You all must be googling me!

Tags: google blog search | revision | writing | Sweaty Sex | Women of the Bite | Rekindled | Power Plays | Experimental | DILF | anthology | Jen Bluekissed

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