Writerly goodness

CanCon 2015 day 2: Asteroids

/ Melanie Marttila / 1 Comment

I can’t believe it. I actually had the time between Boxing Day shopping and family dinner this evening to put my post up. I love it when a plan comes together 😉

Happy Boxing Day, everyone!

Panellists: Andrew Barton, Eric Choi, Wolfram Lunscher

AsteroidsPanel

AB: Let me just say this: Armageddon is not a documentary.

WL: Asteroids pass Earth all the time. There’s an asteroid that will pass us on the far side of the moon, about 15,000 miles. The Hallowe’en asteroid. Mining asteroids is feasible, but we’d need rockets bigger than the Saturn 5. Space-X is developing the Falcon Heavy, which could be used for the purpose. Our planetary resource needs could be met by mining four asteroids. There is a parallel between the exploration of space and the exploration of the new world. Spice used to be as expensive as gold until the Spice Islands were discovered. It will be expensive to mine asteroids until we have sufficient access to the resources we need to make it reasonable.

Q: Can a solar mirror be used to melt asteroids?

WL: For resource processing in situ, a solar mirror could be used to smelt minerals. If we can figure out a cost-effective way to mine asteroids, we could become a true space-faring species.

EC: Terrestrial mining is a huge part of the Canadian economy. Can we transfer these skills to the mining of asteroids?

WL: The short answer is, yes. There’s a lot of enthusiasm within the industry for making the leap. Deep mining drills are taking place in Sudbury and a paper is being prepared, a feasibility study.

EC: Back to you Andrew. You said before that Armageddon was science fiction.

AB: I’m not the expert. I’m just and author who likes to write about asteroids. My research tells me that asteroid settlement is possible. James S.A. Corey (actually two co-authors) writes about the Belters, who make a living mining the asteroid belt for water to supply settlements on Mars and Jupiter’s moons. Asteroids are actually spinning rubble piles.

Q: Diverting asteroids away from Earth is supposed to be more effective than trying to blow the up. Are there any practical experiments or is this all fiction?

AB: We could use a kind of gravity tractor to divert asteroids. There’s not a lot of drama in the process, though, so people don’t write about that.

WL: If the asteroid impact is immanent, we would have to try blowing it up. If we can spot the asteroid at least ten years out, we would have the time to mount a mission to divert it.

EC: The budgets for the films Armageddon and Deep Impact were both orders of magnitude greater than the budget astronomers have for asteroid detection.

AB: There’s a probe that has been sent to the inner solar system, to Venus and closer to the sun. It’s intended to detect asteroids orbiting in the inner solar system. There’s danger from that direction, too.

Q: What complications does the spinning of the asteroid pose to landing on it?

AB: It’s problematic because there are voids in the asteroid a probe or landing vehicle could be lost.

And that was time.

Next weekend, I’m going to take a break from CanCon do write my year-end Next Chapter update, and, if I have time, I want to put together a post on how to set up Jamie Raintree’s new writing and revision tracking spreadsheet. I was asked to do this back in the spring by some writer friends who aren’t Excel-savvy, but realized that doing it when the spreadsheet is fresh off the presses would be better. Sorry for the delay, ladies!

We’ll see how it goes 🙂

In the meantime, I hope everyone is safe and cozy with their loved ones and if anyone dared Boxing Day madness, that they’re all home and none the worse for wear (if a little poorer in their bank accounts).

Thoughty Thursday: Things that made me go hmmmm on the interwebz, December 13-19, 2015

/ Melanie Marttila / 2 Comments

And here we are on Christmas Eve. Got some presies for ya 🙂

Try vayaan mudra to empower your nervous system. Yoganonymous.

Last week, I shared spoken word poet’s take on depression. This week, Upworthy shares another great spoken word poet who uses a haunted house as a metaphor for her anxiety.

Here’s an important message from the universal daughter. #deardaddy

 

What happened when the UN sent three foreign women to assess gender equality in the United States. The Huffington Post.

Dave Sandford wades into Lake Eerie to take these amazing pictures. Buzzfeed.

Watch the northern lights over Murmansk, Russia.

 

A drone captures images of underwater petroglyphs in Lake St. Nelson, BC (I’ve been told it’s a fair distance from Vancouver). Ancient Colony.

Science Alert reports that this stem cell treatment halts MS progression in 91% of patients.

Week before last, I transcribed my notes of Nina Munteanu’s workshop on ecology and story, including extremophiles and quasi-extremophiles like tardigrades. So when I came across this Buzzfeed post, I thought: Strange, but totally amusing. The Disney Princesses as tardigrades.

It’s official! Voyager I is now in interstellar space. Universe Today.

Phil Plait shares a gorgeous photo of Earthrise. Slate.

How December 25th became the day we celebrate Christmas. Bible History Daily.

Have a happy holiday, whatever you celebrate.

Peace and love unto you and yours.

Thoughty Thursday

Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the interwebz, December 13-19, 2015

/ Melanie Marttila

Here’s your Writerly Goodness for the first day of winter, 2015.

K.M. Weiland offers four ways to reignite your sense of wonder in your writing.

Later in the week, Katie shared three smart tips for structuring powerful scenes.

Roz Morris wonders how much you talk about your work in progress?

I’m fond of the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory (MBTI) and similar assessments. Jami Gold shares some MBTI resources in her exploration of personality and how it affects writing process.

Janice Hardy offers some strategies for describing your first person narrator. Fiction University.

Angela Ackerman discusses how to use weather to create mood, not clichés on Writers in the Storm.

Carly Watters explains why we need time, fear, and talent to make it as writers.

Amy Craft explores the science behind the best way to read for CBS News.

Kids should read whatever they want, whenever they want. Rachel Cordasco for Book Riot.

Tech Insider shares six websites that let you download ebooks for free. You may not know about all of them.

Steven Pinker reveals some of the most misused word in the English language. Business Insider.

Scrabble’s Anagram Christmas turns negatives into positives 🙂

 

X-rays reveal the secrets of medieval books. Medieval Books.

Mansplaining Lolita. Rebecca Solnit for LitHub.

Buzzfeed shares 38 literary quotes that may help you when you’re feeling down. ‘Tis the seasonal affective disorder (SAD).

Blastr shares Arthur C. Clarke’s top 12 science fiction movies.

Den of Geek celebrates the dogs of speculative fiction.

Molly Templeton reviews the first episode on SyFy’s The Magicians (based on Lev Grossman’s novels) for Tor.com. Phil and I caught it and were very impressed. Looking forward.

Leah Schnelbach liked the SyFy adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End well enough, but Phil and I weren’t impressed. Now Phil is a scientist and a SF purist, so his reaction was understandable. My disappointment? Not so much. I’m still working it through, but I think it has something to do with the storytelling decisions made. The critical error in my estimation (so far)? Whose story is it? What character is there from beginning to (almost) end? Karellan. That’s who. Now that’s a story I would have liked to see. It would have been a bigger departure from the book than what SyFy gave us, but I think it would have been better. That’s just my opinion, though.

Because the costume makes the period drama part of Outlander shine, Frock Flicks is giving us droughtlander sufferers a sneak peek at the season two wardrobe.

Good words to you, my friends. The light is returning! Or maybe it’s just the Earth turning/tilting? Meh. Precession and all that.

See you in two days for some Thoughty on Thursday 🙂

Tipsday

CanCon 2015 day 1: How to pitch

/ Melanie Marttila

Panellists: Hayden Trenholm, Gabrielle Harbowy, Robert Runte, Elizabeth Hirst, Marie Bilodeau

PitchPanel

Q: What do you want to see/hear in a pitch?

EH: Enthusiasm. If the author loves their book and believes in it, that’s a good sign. Make sure the book you pitch is finished.

HT: Don’t lie. If the book isn’t finished, be up front about it. If the finished book comes in nine months later, that ship has sailed, though.

GH: First impressions count. Don’t ignore the guidelines. One guy wiped his nose before he shook my hand. It didn’t matter what he did after that.

EH: Presentation is key.

HT: I have to know I can send you to a high-end book store. Publishers don’t buy books. We buy authors.

RR: Different editors look for different things. You want to get rejected as quickly as possible. If you’re not a fit for the editor, you have to feel good about that and move on. You’ll find the editor who’s as passionate about your work as you are. I polled my SF Canada colleagues and asked them, ‘what’s the longest you’ve waited for a response?’ Eight years was the longest. That’s a huge chunk of your life.

HT: Pitching is like a job interview. Treat it like that.

EH: I wish the authors well. If it’s not for me, I might suggest someone else.

GH: Don’t argue. All decisions are final.

HT: Some people try to tell me why I’m wrong. It’s like asking for a second date after a failed first one.

EH: You should ask as many questions as they ask you.

HT: You have to make sure it’s the right fit.

EH: I might recommend self-publishing to some pitchers.

GH: But I can’t take a book that’s already been published.

RR: You have to make sure you match your capabilities. Don’t promise anything you can’t deliver.

HT: We don’t know everything. We all do what we can. Self-published books are a tough sell. 55% of Americans won’t read an ebook. Think about what you want. Your expectations should be clear. A bestseller in Canada is about 5000 books. When you choose a small publisher, you have a personal relationship. Our goal is to make the best book we can. If that’s what you want, pitch to a small press.

GH: Bigger presses look at Dragon Moon’s catalogue. We’re happy to send authors on to bigger and better things.

RR: If you’re asked for a synopsis, it’s a blow by blow of everything that happens in the novel, including the end. I need to know the ending. You have to tell me what your book is about.

EH: The ending is not as important to me as the main conflict. What’s interesting about the book? What’s the intrigue? That’s the reason people read.

GH: Premise and plot are not the same thing, though.

HT: People think the book has to be perfect. No. The book has to be interesting. If the book is a shambles in terms of spelling and grammar, we can fix it.

RR: I have to love your book to put the four- to five hundred comments on it that I do on most books. I’ve been giving these talks forever, but I finished my first book and went to pitch it . . . and blew it.

HT: The last person who knows what the book is about is the author.

Q&A ensued.

And that’s the end of day 1. Between Nina’s workshop and this panel, the opening ceremonies took place and after this panel, I went to the Bundoran Press book launch and SF Canada party, where I got to hear GoH Ed Willett read from his latest novel and network with my writerly peeps.

So that was all I did on Friday.

Next week: Asteroids.

Note: I’m not sure if I’ll be able to post on Saturday or if it will have to be pushed to Sunday. Family shenanigans. You know the holiday drill 🙂

Thoughty Thursday: Things that made me go hmmmm on the interwebz, December 6-12, 2015

/ Melanie Marttila / 2 Comments

Here is your Thoughty for the week.

Colin Gautrey writes about women and bullying for Learn to Influence.

48 things women hear in a lifetime that men don’t:

 

The Ross Spiral Curriculum. This is kind of mind-blowing.

Emily Hill explores the world of Maori tattooing, or moko, for Wanderlust.

John Hooper unravels the history of the Etruscans for The Guardian.

Phil Plait shares his video of the moon occulting Venus on Slate. Beautiful.

Watch whales swim under the northern lights on NBC News.

Ethnobeat Irkusk percussion groups plays the Baikal Ice.

 

Story Travelers take a road trip across the UNESCO world heritage sites of Ireland.

 

Disturbed covers Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence.” Shivers. Rock ‘n’ Roll World Magazine.

It’s kawaii time!

Animals who think they’re puppies:

 

Hope you enjoyed your edutainment!

See you Saturday for more CanCon 2015 reportage 🙂

Thoughty Thursday

Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the interwebz, December 6-12, 2015

/ Melanie Marttila / 3 Comments

It’s been another great week of Writerly Goodness.

Jane Friedman offers her thoughts on privilege and luxury with respect to her productivity. This is particularly interesting in light of my The next chapter update of last week.

Here’s one of the articles Jane links in her post (above): The writing class by Jaswinder Bolina for the Poetry Foundation. I actually shared one of the others last week . . .

Jane later tries to answer the question; do men receive bigger book advances than women?

Why I choose to write publicly about my anxiety. Kameron Hurley.

K.M. Weiland returns to her most common writing mistakes series with this entry: Anticlimactic endings.

David Corbett explores shame, guilt, and hope, referencing other excellent posts by Tom Bentley and Donald Maass, in this post for Writer Unboxed: The redemptive arc.

Lisa Cron continues her exploration of backstory on Writer Unboxed: What we’ve been taught about backstory and why it’s wrong.

Tor.com offers their list of the SFF characters they couldn’t stop talking about in 2015.

Sherman Alexie: How storytelling can create social change. The Take Away.

Elizabeth Gilbert discusses not getting an MFA on The MFA Project.

Open Culture shares 48 hours of Joseph Campbell lectures for free.

Mental Floss offers Edison’s footage of Mark Twain in his home.

Charles Dickens once created an entire library of fake books. He titled them all himself. Someone was wearing his clever trousers. Open Culture.

Karin Scheper wonders whether to conserve or not to conserve on the Medieval Books blog.

Ah, another lovely entry in the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. Kudoclasm:

 

And with that bit of poetry, I leave you.

Until Thursday, mes cheres!

Tipsday

CanCon 2015, day 1: Ecology and story workshop with Nina Munteanu

/ Melanie Marttila

It took us a little longer to drive to Ottawa than I thought, so I was late for this workshop. My apologies to Nina and to any of my readers who experience confusion as a result. If you think there’s something missing, you’re probably right 🙂

_____________________________________________________

Overlapping ecosystems are vibrant.

Ecologists ask why and how.

  • Why do species eat this food and not that one?
  • How do the environment, other species, diet, etc. limit population growth?

Adaptive traits:

  • Mimicry
  • Camouflage

Autotrophs (producers – species which produce their own food)

Phototrophs (produce food from light)

The Bracken Fern. Ubiquitous. Found on every continent except Antarctica. Very successful. Carcinogenic. Breaks down vitamin B. Reproduces by both spores and rhizomes.

Fiddleheads contain cyanide. Aggressive symbiosis. They attract ants which in turn defend it against other predators (peonies do this, too, though they don’t contain cyanide).

Nothing else will grow in a hemlock grove. It kills all potentially competitive species.

Some primates live with viruses that cause disease in other species because the monkey is the virus’s ‘ideal’ host. (Mel’s note: I think this was a digression into other forms of symbiosis–monkeys aren’t phototrophs.)

Chemotrophs (produce food from chemical processes)

Heterotrophs (consumers and decomposers, including us)

Parasites

Saprotrophs – fungi and bacteria

Detrivores – insects and earthworms

Lynn Margulis proposed the Gaia hypothesis and symbiogenesis (Google search for more information).

Endosymbiosis – cooperative adaptation.

Darwin’s theory of competition (survival of the fittest) is incomplete. It doesn’t explain altruism.

Symbiosis leads to happiness.

  • Kin selection – the choice to support the reproductive group including sacrifice for the greater good (heroism).
  • Group selection – the choice to limit population growth in favour of x (where x is more food, habitat, etc. for all).
  • Reciprocal altruism – The vampire bat, for example. All hunters may not be successful, but the successful hunters will share their food with the unsuccessful and with mothers/pups (by regurgitation) to ensure the continued strength of the community.
  • True altruism – Dolphins will help humans and other species for no apparent gain. (Mel’s note: they may also rape their own and other species for no apparent reason, but that’s another story.)
  • Communal feeding – Lions in prides.
  • Satellites – In some frog species, the small males will hang out with the big, noisy ones and ‘head off’ the eligible females attracted by their big, noisy brethren.
  • Niche partitioning – competing species that coexist in the same ecosystem by voluntarily partitioning food, habitat, etc..

Adaptation and extremophiles

The brine shrimp of Mono Lake (California) thrive in inland seas with salinity that kills potential predators. They can also survive being dried out.

There are flies that can swim and dive because they carry their own oxygen supplies in air bubbles.

There are bacteria that feed on sulphur.

The Microbes of Lake Untersee in Antarctica live in a super alkaline environment with lots of dissolved methane in the water. They create stromatolites—the largest ever found anywhere.

Bacteria in the Rio Tinto thrive in extreme acidity and high iron content in the water.

The fungi of Chernobyl feed on high levels of radioactivity.

The Atacama Salt Flats in Chile is the most arid desert in the world, yet hypolithic algae have evolved to thrive where no other plant life can.

Tardigrades (also known as water bears or moss piglets) can survive anywhere, even in space (for approximately ten days). They can be revived after a century of desiccation and endure 1000 times the lethal dose of radiation for a human. Technically, they’re not true extremophiles because they have not adapted to prefer, or thrive in these environments. They merely survive.

 

_____________________________________________________

The rest of the workshop was taken up by an exercise in which we applied ecology to the characters of our stories. How have our protagonists adapted to thrive in adverse conditions, compete against, or mimic, other characters, to become the heroes of our stories? In what ways do they show altruism, and is it true altruism, or another form? How does the unique environment of the story world affect them?

It was a very interesting workshop and I’m sorry to have missed the beginning of it.

Unfortunately, because of my late arrival, I did not get a picture of Nina or the workshop participants.

It was a good start to a great weekend of panels, though.

Come back next Saturday when the CanCon 2015 reportage continues with advice on pitching your novel.

Thoughty Thursday: Things that made me go hmmmm on the interwebz, Nov 29-Dec 5, 2015

/ Melanie Marttila / 2 Comments

What you should do in an active shooter situation. I can’t believe we need posts like this, but an ex-pat friend confesses she’s already had active shooter drills at her workplace. The Art of Manliness.

Will Canada be able to resolve the problems of its First Nations as quickly as it’s providing homes for Syrian refugees? It’s a valid question. The Globe and Mail.

Not everything happens for a reason. Bright Side.

The Unbound Spirit offers thirteen things you need to remember if you love a person who suffers from anxiety.

The decline of play can result in the increase in children’s mental disorders. Psychology Today.

This special agent crow proves he’s more than a bird brain. Daily Megabyte.

Brainpickings shares The Silent Friends, a lovely short film about our abiding bond with trees.

Canadian home care is suffering, but what about its patients? The Globe and Mail.

Lovely photograph of a lazy fox. Joop Snijder.

The Budweiser 2015 Superbowl ad, lost dog. The feels.

 

Phil Plait shares the latest Pluto images on Slate.

Preservationists fight to save forgotten French castle. You know how I like abandoned places 🙂 Wimp.

The last of the granny witches. Appalachian Ink.

The spirit of Mother Christmas. Gather.

Mog’s Christmas Calamity is adorable. Metro.

A Christmas classic:

 

You, me, Saturday. Let the CanCon 2015 reportage begin!

Thoughty Thursday

Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the interwebz, Nov 29-Dec 5, 2015

/ Melanie Marttila / 2 Comments

Gah! Almost didn’t make it, this week. The holiday season is starting to take over (!)

K.M. Weiland offers a final lesson learned from writing Storming: how to choose the right point of view.

Nina Munteanu shares her thought on how to end your novel.

Lance Schaubert picks apart the axiom that there is nothing new under the sun in this post for Writer Unboxed: Old books > new books.

What’s the current Donald Maass is writing about on Writer Unboxed? . . . and the greatest of these is hope.

What Cathy Yardley learned from writing erotica. Writer Unboxed.

So, Chuck Wendig saw this article in The Wall Street Journal and responded, no, ejaculated, most fizzily.

Junot Diaz shares his MIT writing class syllabi with Open Culture.

CBC Books presents its winter reading recommendations.

How the literary class system is impoverishing literature. Literary Hub.

A brilliant spoken word performance that explains depression perfectly. Upworthy.

Air New Zealand’s epic flight safety video:

 

Grandfather Frost and Baba Yaga: The weird and wonderful world of Russian fairytales. The Guardian.

Futurity examines science fiction’s lasting obsession with Mars.

J.J. Abrams actually said that Star Wars was always a boys’ thing. That toe jam taste good?

Phil and I are enjoying Jessica Jones. Here are a few posts about the show:

Suffering from #droughtlander ? Here’s a trailer for you to drool over. E!Online.

See you on Thoughty Thursday!

Tipsday

The next chapter: October and NaNoWriMo 2015 extravaganza!

/ Melanie Marttila / 3 Comments

In a way, I really enjoyed not posting on the weekends, but I don’t know how else I’m going to share my struggles, accomplishments, and great content like the CanCon 2015 panels I’ll start transcribing next week, unless I resume weekend (and mostly Saturday—today is an aberration) posts.

As I often tell y’all, it’s all writerly goodness 🙂

I’m happy when someone lets me know that I’ve shared something that’s been helpful to them. What’s a writerly girl to do?

Write.

October in a nutshell

My goals for October were to:

  • revise and submit a short story to a contest,
  • resume/catch up on querying,
  • finish Gerod and the Lions,
  • finish my outline for Reality Bomb in preparation for NaNo, and
  • attend CanCon 2015, October 29-November 1.

My short story made it all the way to the short list in Pulp Literature’s Raven Short Story Contest. This was my third ‘near-miss’ this year, having made the short list for the 2014 Friends of the Merrill Contest with one story, and having another short story set aside for special consideration in an anthology call, but ultimately rejected.

I don’t know whether this means I’m improving, or stuck in a rut O.o

I sent out not one, but two batches of queries in October. I’ve also already heard back from a number of agents with ‘thanks, but no thanks’ emails. I’ve decided to give the querying a break for now until the new year. The poor agents will be flooded with hopeful writers and their newly revised NaNo novels. I don’t want to get lost in the inundation. Besides, I have other reasons, which I’ll let you know about shortly.

I didn’t get GatL finished. I did write almost 9k words on the draft and I’m up to the climax, but then I was on the road for CanCon and I figured I’d save myself for the convention and for NaNoWriMo. I’ll resume work on GatL once I’ve finished Reality Bomb. Yes, more news on that coming, too.

I finished my outline for Reality Bomb with days to spare. It was a hand-written free-write in my journal, a ‘draft zero,’ if you will, which I was quite happy with, even though I made one major change that had some interesting cascading effects.

I attended CanCon, with Phil in tow, and, aside from attending a great workshop and two days of great panels, I also booked three blue-pencil sessions and two publisher pitch sessions. Right now, various portions of Initiate of Stone are on under consideration by three (one publisher was unable to attend and gave everyone a chance to pitch electronically after the fact) amazing small Canadian publishers.

That’s another reason why I’m holding off on further querying.

Come the New Year, though, watch out!

My October numbers:

  • GatL – 8,913 words
  • Short fiction – 45 words
  • Blog – 8,444 words
  • Total: 17,402 words.

October was a good month 😀

OctoberProgress

NaNoWriMo 2015

The idea for Reality Bomb was a dream that I’d had back in January.

Short pitch: Physics PhD candidate, Brenda O’Connell, fails to stop a misguided colleague from conducting his experiment to prove that time travel into the past is possible, destroying their reality and hurling Brenda into an alternate reality, nearly a year in the past. Nothing about her life in this new reality is what Brenda knows or remembers, but her former colleague is still heading toward a repeat of his catastrophic mistake. Can Brenda stop him before he destroys another reality?

I’ve decided that I like the free-writing, draft zero kind of outline. I’ve tried both more formal and less formal outlines in the past and I think this method really allows me to flesh out the characters and the ideas in a better way. Also, outlining by hand makes me feel as though the outline is more flexible, less permanent, and it facilitates my process better.

November first, I was still in Ottawa. It was also the first day of the time change, so I basically had an hour to write in the morning before I went to my first session. I cranked 1,559 words out and then spent the rest of the day in panels, blue-pencils, and pitches, drove the six hours home to Sudbury in torrential rain (and in the dark), and kind of crashed.

Fortunately, I’d taken the following week as vacation and set myself the goal of writing 30k words before my return to work the next Monday.

I’m glad to say that I accomplished that goal, writing between three and five thousand words each day.

The reason I wanted to get all those words written was that I knew I was going to be working, and travelling to deliver training, for the rest of the month. The week I was on the road was, as I expected, a low-production week. But I wrote, something I hadn’t been able to do the last couple of times I travelled to delivery training. So that in itself was a win.

NaNo-2015-Winner-Badge-Large-Square

And when I got back home I was able to comfortably write between 1,000 and 1,500 words each evening, finishing the month, and winning NaNo, with 55,006 words. The validator missed out on some of the words because I forgot to remove all of Word’s formatting (doh!). Still—writing stuff is awesome!

Including the blog, I wrote 56,994 words in November. Awesome. Indeed.

NaNoWriMo2015

Last year, I only managed 28,355 words while I was working.

What did I do to turn this around?

As I mentioned at the top of this post, I stopped blog posts on the weekends, but still kept up with my Tipsday and Thoughty Thursday curation posts (I couldn’t abandon you completely!).

Front loading my words in that first week off was critical to my success. I figured if I could get the 30k written, that I could ‘coast,’ relatively speaking, for the rest of the month. I would even have room for a day off if I needed it, but I wrote something every day, even if it was only a few hundred words. Also, the momentum I developed over the course of that first week carried me quite far into the month. I never felt stressed or worried that I couldn’t do it this time around.

I didn’t do any much housework. There’s always some of that to do, but I cut back substantially.

I told people. I’ve told people about NaNo in the past, but, with the exception of Phil, no one really got on board. This year, if people forgot, I just told them again. Kindly. Happily. Enthusiastically, even. It kept me accountable.

I wrote as soon as I got home from work and made it my priority before I did anything else. Get your words done first. The rest of life will wait.

Unfortunately, I can’t get up early enough anymore to write before I go to work. So first thing after work is the best I can do.

What did I learn from NaNoWriMo 2015?

I can write 50k (and more) in a month, even while I’m working.

Why is this important? Well, if I get a publishing deal, I’d hope it would be for more than one book, and, generally speaking, publishers want the books to come out fairly quickly (relatively speaking). So I’ve just proven to myself that I can produce when I need to. It’s comforting.

Also, it wasn’t that long ago that I was bemoaning my inability to produce. I was kind of stuck writing very little each day and letting myself get away with the not so occasional day of not writing at all.

I think I’ve been depressed, to be honest. It’s been a very mild recurrence, though. So mild I didn’t even realize what I had on my hands. Having to euthanize Nu back in July probably got to me more that I’d like to think. I thought I was grieving. I was actually shutting down.

Now, thanks to writing, I’m coming back.

What am I working on now?

I’m finishing up Reality Bomb first. I’m up to 58,376 words as of today. I’ve gone back to writing around 500 words a day, but I know I can do more if I need to. About to start chapter 33 of 36, so I should be done soon-ish.

Then I’ll finish up GatL. Finally. Remember when I was saying that about Marushka (last year’s NaNo)? I do finish my shit. Sometimes it just takes a while.

I have another contest to get a short story ready for, and if that doesn’t take me through to the end of the year, I’ll probably get back to work on Apprentice of Wind.

So . . . let’s just take a brief accounting.

  • Initiate of Stone – Adult epic fantasy of about 130k words. In the submission process.
  • Apprentice of Wind – Adult epic fantasy. Drafted at 115k words. Substantial rewrite required to bring it into line with the changes made in IoS.
  • Figments – YA urban fantasy. Drafted at 53k words. Reviewed, mapped, and reverse engineered. Ready for revision.
  • Gerod and the Lions – MG secondary world fantasy. Aiming for a 40k draft.
  • Marushka – YA urban/fairy tale retelling. Drafted at 67k. Awaiting review.
  • Reality Bomb – New Adult science fiction. Aiming for 65k in the completed draft.

That’ll be six novels by the end of this year. In various stages of completion 😉

And I have ideas for another fifteen (or so) more. Oh, this writing life is a good one. And I love it.

See you next Saturday with the first of the CanCon reports.

The Next Chapter