It’s, of course, November, which means National Novel Writing Month. A time to scramble around, attempting to write 50,000 words in thirty days, and don’t forget the holiday you have to get ready for.
Or it’s merely November, and if you’re like me, your busyness takes a different shape.
I’ve never formally done NaNo, but for the past five or six years, I’ve kept track of word counts and made a special effort to get 50k on the page during this month. Sharing those word counts has always been optional for me, and I’ve never engaged with the website or the community that’s sprung up around it.
This year, I’m not even trying for those 50k words.
I wanted to; I thought I’d be done with my first regency murder mystery, The Root of All Evil, and on to the next book, which would fit nicely in 50k words. The only outline existed in my head, but that was fixable.
But The Root of All Evil isn’t quite finished, and now that I’m switching back and forth between writing brain and editing brain, my word counts have gone down, I’m a disorganized mess, and frankly, it’s not worth the extra stress.
So, no NaNoWriMo for me this year. Instead, I’m going to stick with my usual schedule, which is to write for about two hours a day, trying to get at least a thousand words, and not worry too much about it.
Share your not NaNo-related projects in the comments, and here a snippet of the book that’s messing up my plans:
***
The door was open. Reddington did not like that, and entered the house without knocking. “Miss Bereton?” he called uncertainly, hoping for and dreading whatever answer he would receive.
“Mr. Reddington?” Miss Bereton’s voice, hurried and agitated, burst forth. “Come upstairs; I need you!”
There could be nothing favorable about anything that upset Miss Bereton so, and Reddington positively ran up the stairs and met Miss Bereton coming out of one of the rooms. She was very pale, and stammered, “I- I must trouble you for your assistance.”
By this time, Reddington had absorbed the facts of her appearance and- “You’re bleeding!”
She glanced down at the stain on her dress. “It’s not mine.”
Reddington had time for only a momentary feeling of relief. “Whose is it?”
She drew a long breath. “It’s Mr. Carroll’s. I think he’s dead.”
Reddington stared stupidly for a moment, then pulled himself together enough to ask, “Are you injured?”
“No.”
“Tell me what happened.”
Another long, slow breath. “Mr. and Mrs. Carroll were arguing in their room-” she pointed to a door across the passage. “I came up the stairs and he had his hands around her neck. She broke free and- I thought she hit him, but he was bleeding.” She was looking somewhere behind him; Reddington turned and focused on a bloody scissor blade lying on the floor of the Carrolls’ room, about a foot from the door.
He thought, with the strange detachment of a man watching events from far away, that the blade was, in fact, long enough to kill a man, were it to strike a vital spot. “Where did she hit him?”
Miss Bereton said uncertainly, “Somewhere between his neck and shoulder, I think.”
That would do it. “Stay there,” he ordered, and stepped across the hallway, careful not to disturb anything.
Carroll was indeed lying in a pool of blood, not moving. Reddington went closer, and cursorily examined the inert form. The blood appeared to originate from a spot just below Carroll’s left collarbone, though there was so much of it that Reddington would be hard-pressed to swear to even that conclusion. There was a faint smell of burning in the air, and he looked about and discovered a letter smoldering upon the hearth. He quickly stamped out the glowing, smoking paper and returned his attention to Carroll’s body.
“Is he dead?” Miss Bereton’s voice came from the doorway.
Reddington looked up. “I told you to stay where I put you.”
She grimaced. “I’m sorry,” she said, and retreated. Reddington followed.
“He’s not breathing,” he said, once they’d regained the hall, “and he certainly bled enough to extinguish life. I’ll send for Mr. Jones. How badly is Mrs. Carroll injured?”
“Well, he was strangling her, but I don’t think she’s going to die from it,” Miss Bereton said matter-of-factly, then dissolved into a flood of tears as Reddington looked on in dismay and, eventually, regained his wits enough to offer her a handkerchief.
***
With any luck, I’ll get the rest done this week and publish before Christmas.
What are you working on, if you’re not doing NaNo? Share in the comments.
Mad Genius Club 
15 responses to “Na-Nope!”
This book looks fun, whenever you drop snippets. I will have to keep a weather eye out for it 🙂
I got current book back from beta readers/proofreaders, and and currently implementing their advice. Edited seven chapter out of thirteen so far. Draft ebook cover is ready, raw materials for ebook cover are ready. Monday and Tuesday I lucked into situations that would have been good “dictation while driving” but didn’t have any words in me. This morning, I was stuck in traffic behind an accident for over an hour, and finally went, “Okay, Lord, I get it,” and started dictating part of the sequel.
raw materials for print book cover, ugh.
Getting Ko-fi set up and trying to get ahead on it. As well as getting through the Perpetual Editing Project of DOOM (aka Bearskin. about 50 pages to enter. Then I have to figure out Ingram Spark’s print on demand.)
I’ve been writing epilogues to the final book in my Martha’s Sons series. I finished today and sent them off to the alpha reader, who has the rest of the manuscript.
I should start working on the blurb for the sales page. I want to start outlining my next book, which will be near future and have a very different setting, namely, here on Earth in Orange, Virginia. I’m getting excited about it, even as I get all sentimental about the characters I’m leaving behind in the current series. I may have written three epilogues just to hold onto them all a little longer.
Love the snippet.
I’m doing the background reading for the next Merchant book. I’ve outlined the big ideas, location, and conflicts, but have not started writing anything yet. I did start the next Elect story, but it’s on an older computer that can’t log into WP any longer (WPDE).
I did NaNo last month: A finished 89,000-word novel in 32 days. I don’t have to do NaNo this month.
I’m about 11,000 words into a new fantasy adventure with humor this month; but it’s not NaNo, I swear!
Every month is Novel Writing Month here at Chez Phantom. ~:D
I never keep track of word counts, I don’t find them helpful. But since it was mentioned, current WIP is up to 50K, last WIP is 99% done at 229K, just need to write the party at the end.
Every book ends with a party. My characters worked hard, they deserve some fun at the end.
Same, same I do need to finish at least four books. Is it going to happen? Only if a miracle occurs.
I, uh, accepted a challenge to rewrite a romance book so it had the plotholes fixed.
It’s not going as fast as NaNo would demand. It’s also not staying on track. By the time I worldbuilt enough to fix the plotholes, it jettisoned the main contrivance that drove the plot, and now it’s going back to tactically correct romance…
I never NaNo unless I have a completed outline. Once I rushed the outline. That was unwise.
Editing a book mixing a caper, science fiction, and magic spells. Sort of Elmore Leonard with flying cars and a root worker. And robots.
Nope to Na-No-Mo. I have four books under contract for 2024 and need to get the one I am working on now done. I am also working a full-time day job.
Mind the books I am working on are typically shorter than 50,000 words (17,000 to 35,000) and are non-fiction. I also need to track down 40-65 interior illustrations, and provide detailed artists’ instructions for 3-8 pieces of original artwork and instruction for 3-8 maps (which typically adds another 12k-20k words). Oh, and visual material for the artists to use in their pictures.
But I tick along at 500 or so words a day on workdays and 1500-2000 words per day on weekends. I’ve been writing at that pace for 10 or so years, so I figure I don’t have anything to prove by churning out 50,000 words in a month. I’ll happily play the tortoise.
Just passed 52,000 words on ‘Texas in the Med’, trying to get it done this month so I can have December to get feedback from my test readers and get a cover done for a Christmas/ year end release. I’ve been averaging about 1,000 words a day so far this month.
NaNoWriMo gets me off my, err, bad writing habits, and wasting time on the internet. I’ve done it ten times in the last thirteen years, only “failed” once (and trimmed that attempt down to a short story that went in an Anthology) and published eight of the other nine. With more writing and a lot of polishing afterwards, mind you.
This year . . . started well and has face planted. Attempts to get back up have been a bit weak. Worst case–I have 16K words plus 2K lists and background ready for this story to take off again.