Happy May! April was an excellent month for me, and I’m just now starting to recover from it.
It was Camp National Novel Writing month, which is an offshoot of the regular NaNoWriMo, and tried something new—practicing intuitive writing. I won't get into all the boring details, but essentially, there are two kinds of writers: those who plot everything out in advance and those who don't (technically, there are lots of subcategories of those groups as well, but I digress).
I am a writer who doesn't plot things out ahead of time, and I've always fought with it. I've read a couple dozen books on plotting, taken courses on it, even taught courses on it, and it never worked for me. So the last couple years I've been leaning into intuitive drafting more and more, trying to work with my brain rather than against it, and it's one of the best writing choices I've ever made.
Last month, I dove in with both feet. The goal was to simply write whatever I felt like, however I felt like, whenever I felt like. And the results have been astonishing.
By the end of the month, I clocked nearly 105k words written. For reference, the goal for a regular NanoWriMo is 50k, and during a typical camp, I tend to aim for 30k. My books tend to range between 60k and 80k words.
I wrote across several projects simultaneously: a series of short fairy tales by Ariele (see the cover images); a longer fantasy novel in a new world, new series; a book on intuitive writing for writers; and a short story set in the Land of Szornyek world about Askari's mother.
I have several other projects on the horizon as well. I just got back my proofreader's notes on Book 7 of Land of Szornyek, so you can likely expect that within the next couple of weeks, depending on whether or not I do a map to go with it—if you want a map of Askari's world leave a comment, and if I get at least 3 replies either here or via email, I'll definitely do it.
In addition, I'm working on scheduling the proofread of the secret trilogy I've been talking about for three years, now titled Aria's Song. The plan is to launch all three books of the trilogy at once sometime in July, though that will depend somewhat on how well I can get my act together.
And soon, I hope to have another update on the Rove City series, so keep an eye out for that.
At any rate, my April was great. High word count aside, I also played piano nearly every day, planted some stuff in the garden, finished a few major house projects, and had a nice visit with my father-in-law. So yeah, feeling pretty good.
Now that May is here, I’ve spent a few days recovering (that many words is like running a month-long marathon), and am trying to catch up on all the things I ignored. I have a couple more blog posts in the queue as well, so stay tuned!
Or click here to sign up for my newsletter!