Friday 1 November 2013

All I want for NaNo is to pick up the pace!

Today is the first day of National Novel Writing Month, and I'm hard at work on my post-apocalyptic novel Radio Hope.

It's also the day for the All I Want for NaNo bloghop! I and a bunch of other Nano crazies are sharing our NaNo dreams and doing a big shout out for The Spirit of Christmas Anthology. This anthology brings together a bumper crop of writers and NaNo veterans who have shared their Christmas stories for the benefit of the NaNo fund. It's a great organization that's helping out thousands of writers achieve their dreams.

So what's my NaNo dream? Why would a professional writer with more than a dozen books under his belt be doing something like this?

Because I need to pick up the pace. The financial crisis is finally beginning to bite my business. Nonfiction freelance gigs are harder to get than ever, while sales numbers of my fiction are beginning to creep upwards. So I'm going to be focusing much more on fiction from now on. My next Civil War horror novel is with beta readers, I have a post-apocalyptic book planned for NaNo, and more projects after November!

One thing I want NaNo to do is kick me in the pants and up my productivity. There's nothing wrong with being a prolific fiction writer, in fact most of the successful authors are, and I want to be one of them, so NaNo here I come!

UPDATE: I managed 5,314 words on Radio Hope today. I'm totally burnt out but I managed to do a quick copy edit. It looks good but damn there were a lot of typos!


8 comments:

Sioux Roslawski said...

5,000 + words? What an overachiever you are, Sean. They'll kick you out if you hit 50,000 by the end of the first weekend...;)

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

5300 plus words? Whoa...
Go Sean go!

David P. King said...

Glad that your fiction is gathering steam! Best of luck reaching your NaNo goals, and thanks for joining our holiday hop! :)

Trisha said...

Well done on your day's effort! I love NaNo. And I agree that more writing is good! However, since I've written 11 novels already, I really need to kick myself in the pants more in the "editing" direction. :P I will be doing that next year!

AOG said...

Hey S,

I admire your high word count from Friday. Mine was only 2500 more or less on the day at Pepe B's.

Plus a bit more yesterday at Café Fig.

When are you back in Madrid?

Tony (yes, that one)

Sean McLachlan said...

Trisha: 11 novels? Dang, I got some catching up to do!

Tony: I'm passing through for a couple of days at the end of the month before heading to Tangier to work on my next novel (after the NaNo one).

Lauren said...

NaNo's good for picking up the pace, if you can find a pace to pick up. :)

My other novels will just have to wait while I play with a new one.

Jennie Bennett said...

I totally want to pick up the pace too. What writer doesn't want a myriad of books out there with steady cash rolling in. You'll do great! Thanks for joining the hop :)

Looking for more from Sean McLachlan? He also hangs out on the Civil War Horror blog, where he focuses on Civil War and Wild West history.

You can also find him on his Twitter feed and Facebook page.