Year-long NaNo discussion

On this thread, I'll be giving updates on my journey toward the elusive goal of publication - which right now is about as far as the Lonely Mountain is from the Shire. Or Rivendell is from Mount Doom. Whichever is more accurate, I'm not sure at the moment.

I've had to restart this thread since the original got deleted by accident. And it seems that I have not updated this thread since....April 2018.

During April's Camp Nano, I worked on The White Rose and managed to write 10K - which is almost a miracle. So at the end of April, my little WIP was at 15K, my biggest ever.

I got a full time job in May, which really put the dampers on writing for a little while....by that I mean almost 6 months

During July Camp NaNo, I worked on not one WIP but....all 8 that I have open at the moment. It wasn't writing, but more along the lines of development. You see, I had skads of notes that I had all over the place and I really needed to start collecting them all in one place. Now, this only got half accomplished....I did reach my goal of 30 hours though!

I did participate in NaNoWriMo this year for the first time! I decided to work on The White Rose again, I'm really love in that story...
In terms of word count, I did terrible - I wrote only 12K in November.
BUT - The White Rose is now approaching 30K!!!!

And now, it is January 2019. I'm still going forward with The White Rose and am planning on having it ready for betas sometime in May at the very earliest. Who knows, it could be the elusive debut novel that I'm striving for!

It is now mid-July 2019, and it's high time I came on here with a full update since I've started to be active on here again.

April's Camp NaNo was devoted to another story that I've strongly considered as a potential debut. I was burned out with frustration dealing with some of the world-building problems in The White Rose, so I decided to switch WIPs.
I had a previous draft from years ago that needed to be edited and added on to. Instead of it being fantasy like The White Rose, it's a historical pirate story. It's called Fair Winds.

During Camp NaNo, I had a goal of 20,000 words. Considering my rather low word counts, I thought this pretty achievable. I thought that I would in reality only write 10K because the previous draft was also 10K. I knew I was going to add in another POV, which would help boost the word count.
Little did I know how effective that was! I wrote almost 22K words for the entire month, and almost 20K of them were new material from both POVs. I was extremely happy with the results.

Now both stories are competing for my attention. Little was worked on either story until just a few weeks ago.

I decided for this month's Camp NaNo to work on both The White Rose and Fair Winds for a variety of reasons. One, I couldn't decide between the two, even though for all practical purposes, I should be working on TWR. Second, I knew I was going to spend a couple of weeks at the seashore, and to waste such an opportunity to draft in Fair Wind's aesthetic setting would have been a travesty.

My official goal is 60 hours between the two WIPs, but I have an unofficial goal of adding 30K to TWR. I have added in another 6K to Fair Winds, but plan to leave it sit for the rest of month.

Officially, The White Rose is around 35K and Fair Winds is 28K. I'm still going forward with The White Rose, as it has a lot more potential, and frankly, needs much more work and energy right now.

Well, it has been a hot minute, hasn't it? While the individual threads are being updated, this one is being left behind.

So here goes.

The White Rose is now 120,000 words (yes, you read that right) and it's currently in the hands of an editor. I shall receive it back in late September, and revisions will probably take place over NaNo. Currently, my goal is to self-publish this manuscript in Spring 2021.

Meantime, I'm taking a break from writing to focus on building my platform back up. To that end, I have created...an Instagram account! My handle is rebellass71 and I would love to connect with you guys over there!

Catherine wrote: "Well, it has been a hot minute, hasn't it? While the individual threads are being updated, this one is being left behind.

So here goes.

The White Rose is now 120,000 words (yes, you read that r..."

That's awesome!!! :D Congratulations!!!!!!!! :D :D

Thanks!