Adventures / Writer's Life

Adios, 2016!

Or “Good riddance!”, as so many of my friends have shrieked at the top of their lungs, or typed IN ALL CAPS on social media, whichever the case may be. Okay, yeah, I get it, sort of. Your favorite celebrity died, your preferred politician didn’t win, or your team lost their Big Game!  It’s HORRIBLE! It’s the end of the world as we know it! Gloom, despair, and agony on me.

I could go off on everything that was bad about 2016 easily enough. I could sob over still not finding a ‘traditional’ publisher for my novels. I could bemoan the fact that online sales suck and that I’ve typed my fingers to bloody stumps asking for folks to at least post reviews. I could go off on a tangent about how unfair it is that people who have held a very good paying job for 5+ years can’t afford to buy a house while other people who haven’t worked a lick in that same period of time get all these special treatments when it comes to housing. There’s a rant out there about a-hole bosses who take advantage of their employees to the point that they are driven to physical illness and end up having to quit a job they otherwise loved. I could cry over the deaths of a myriad of celebrities that I liked. I could cuss and stomp my feet over the unfairness of our elections. I could begrudge how the Carolina Panthers lost the Super Bowl and that the Cleveland Indians didn’t win the World Series. But, I’m not going to do that, because I’m an optimist and I’m pretty sick and tired of hearing the “Apocalypse Is Nigh” from every other person on Facebook. I refuse to be one of ‘those people’.

Instead, I’m going to look at 2016 as the year I made more progress on my writing career, with or without the advantages a publishing house could give me. I’d love to have help with advertising and promotions and setting up signings, readings, and sales. I could be a lot further ahead of the game if I had all that, sure, but I don’t. I did the best I could with what I DO have. I did a Book Club talk and I had three signing events where turnout was good and sales were more than I’d actually imagined they’d be. That’s more than I’ve ever had before and I’m truly grateful. I made some new friends and got some great advice and some much appreciated help from far more successful writers than I.

I got remarried! That’s pretty darned awesome. I met a man against a whole lot of odds who was willing to pretty much give up his whole life 1400+ miles away and move up to this Arctic Backwoods Wasteland so we could be together. After living together for almost three years, we tied the knot on a beautiful day in August down by my parent’s pond with an amazing view of the valley below. It was small, only forty people, simple, and very casual and laid back. I’m not even going to mention those few things that didn’t happened perfectly as planned because they don’t matter. The end result is the same.

Life has been very good to me and mine in 2016. Most of the time things went how we hoped. Sometimes, not so much, but at the end of it all, we are happy. We have a place to live, food to eat, and warm clothes for winter. We have family and friends that love us, support us, and encourage us with our dreams. We have love. We have happiness. We have hope.

That’s how I’m ending 2016 and that’s how I’m going to enter 2017.

Thank you to everyone who helped make 2016 so amazing! May you all have a wonderful and prosperous new year!

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Writer's Life / Writing

NaNoWriMo – The End

As I mentioned a little bit ago, I’ve had a NaNoWriMo account for three years, but this was the first year I actually used it. Seeing as all the blog rage today seems to be to announce if those participants won or lost the race, I figured I may as well jump in with my two cents worth.

I didn’t make the 50K word count in the allotted time. I didn’t even make 25K, but I don’t consider that a loss. I had started work on “The Witch’s Backbone” last spring (or maybe even before that) and wasn’t making much progress. I had three opening scenes along with a good deal of content, but other writing things (One book talk for a local book club and three signings – plus finishing up writing the first draft and the first round of edits for “Dark Hollow Road”) took priority as well as the whole business of planning a wedding slated to take place at the end of August. I told myself I’d get to TWB after the honeymoon, right after finishing the second round of edits for DHR after letting it sit for a month which is standard procedure for me.

My final 2016 signing was in October and it was then I finally took a breath and started looking at TWB again. Where was I going to go with this thing when I couldn’t even decide on a beginning?! NaNoWriMo to the rescue!

No, I didn’t make the win, but I made progress. I decided my original opening was perfectly fine. I also ended up deleting almost everything I’d written before. Previous characters were either wiped out completely or they had their names and genders changed. The urban legend behind it all solidified. One of the local small town papers provided fodder for weird happenings that I could bend and twist into my own versions of history for my fictional small towns. My mother mentioned a story her mother had told her long ago about a murder that was covered up that I may end up using, too. It all started to gel together and though I didn’t make the 50K mark, I have a destination I’m writing towards and that’s really all I wanted to get out of it.

Beyond the 50K words goal, NaNoWriMo is also meant to get aspiring authors into the habit of writing on a daily basis. In November I realized that I DO write every day or at the very least, I work on something writer-related. I may not be working on a novel, but I find myself working on research notes, blog ideas, or even doing some Beta Reading for someone else. It’s all related. I’ve been trying hard to read and comment on the blogs of other writers more this year, too, giving them encouragement and praise as I can, because that kind of thing is important to me as well. Lack of feedback is killer.

And there you have it, my NaNoWriMo update and with it I managed to write over five-hundred words today.

Write on!

 

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