Back to normal and NaNoWriMo

The flight back to Phoenix was a bit late, but very pleasant. Steven Erikson and I sat together on the flight (he was on his way back to London). We swapped stories—he talked about getting swatted by a bear, I mentioned getting swatted by Mike Tyson. He talked about almost dying in the middle of the Gobi Desert, I mentioned seeing a moose in Maine.

I think I got the better part of the exchange. 🙂

Back in Phoenix all was well at the house. I still have a bit of a sore throat from the weekend, and will sleep like the dead tonight, I am quite certain. While conventions are fun, the fact is that I have to be on and sociable for sixteen or more hours in the day. That might not seem like much of a chore, but remember that my life is mostly spent alone. I can go days without ever leaving the house. Being surrounded by people can be very exhilarating, and also exhausting.

Now that I’m home again, I have to get back to work. Because this is NaNoWriMo and because I have a NOvel to WRIte by the end of the month, I’ll be posting word counts and blogging about it throughout the month. I’ll actually be posting two word counts. My Hard word count will be how many words I got down on At The Queen’s Command. My Soft word count will be the stuff I type for work that isn’t actually fiction.

I’m going to do this for two main reasons. First, I can use the motivation to grind my way through this book. It can be really easy to tell myself that taking a day off won’t hurt; but it does. It can disrupt the rhythm that makes the book flow and keeps its energy up. I really want to push through as I used to do years ago because this book is going well and I want to see how it finishes, too.

The second reason is just to prove to folks that not only can someone do 50,000 words in a month, but they can do more, and it can be good work. A lot of folks buy into the idea that if you write fast, you can’t write well. I know this isn’t true. Plenty of writers who write quickly also write very well. Every writer has his own stride, a pace with which he is comfortable. Fast or slow doesn’t matter, it’s not a sprint, it’s an endurance race.

And that, ultimately, is what is important: hitting your pace, hitting your goal. As I told my NaNo prep classes, the keys to succeeding are:

*Commit to an amount of time and output daily.
*Do not rewrite. Make a note, fix it later. Keep going.
*The goal is 50,000 words, not 50,000 perfect words. Do not let perfect be the enemy of “achieving my goal.”
*Perfect comes with rewrites, and you can only rewrite a novel when you are a novelist. So, finish first, rewrite later.

This is going to be a very busy but good month. I’m looking forward to it and the wonderful things it will bring.