For anyone who participates in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), they know how crazy hectic November can be for a writer. This year was no different, of course!
This is where it all starts, signing up for NaNo, putting in all your info and telling yourself your going to spend the month working on ONE book until you hit 50,000 words.
For me, sticking with one book for an entire thirty days is nearly impossible. I've yet to make it through NaNo without cheating and taking some time off to write something else.
This year was no different!
The official project I uploaded to NaNo was INVINCIBLE, because my poor Wattpad readers have been begging me to finish it. Yes, they think an author can produce a book in a week, and they are teenagers who tend to be a little impatient, but I still love them :)
My goal was to have Invincible finished by November, 30th, which meant writing about 65,000 words in FOUR weeks. I'm a fast writer, so I figured this was doable. What I didn't count on was my usual writer's block-inspiring fear of finishing a series added in with family, work commitments, and a funeral this November.
I get so anxious about wrapping up a series, hoping I didn't forget anything important, double checking to be sure I didn't leave anything out, making sure I wrapped up all the lingering questions, and just plain making sure the ending doesn't SUCK! As you can probably guess, feeling like this makes me not want to touch my manuscript with a ten-foot pole. Makes writing a little bit hard.
So, what do I do normally? Work on something else until I mellow out and quit being a spaz.
BUT IT'S NANO MONTH!!!
Yeah, I still did it. Completely unable to focus on Invincible, I switched to a new project I'm working on, my first New Adult novel, THE GHOST HOST. Before the start of NaNo I had maybe 10k words written on TGH, and had dutifully abandoned it for NaNo and my poor Wattpad readers. I got about three chapters written on Invincible before I just had to step away and work out my weird issues.
I spent the first two weeks of NaNo writing TGH, and finally hit a wall where I needed to stop and think about things 55k words later. So, I had already hit my NaNo goal, but on the WRONG BOOK!
Maybe that part doesn't really matter since I was writing, and that's the whole point of NaNo, but I still had my Wattpad readers to pacify since I had PROMISED to finish Invincible by the end of the month and have it ready for publishing by Christmas.
So, back to work!
I had already had Invincible planned out on a couple dozen sticky notes, so that wasn't the issue. It was making sure this series that has been read several million times on Wattpad (literally) wouldn't disappoint the dedicated fans who have stuck by me since last October when Invisible first popped up on everyone's news feeds on Wattpad. How could I let down all the Robin-haters and Olivason-ship fans who were dying to know what happened in the end and whether Mason and Olivia would be able to stay together?
I had to get writing.
As I do with housework and errands, I bribed myself. Seriously. It wasn't chocolate this time. Normally that does the trick. So long as it the good chocolate. No, this time, I told myself I wasn't allowed to watch even a single episode of Supernatural until Invincible was finished, and I couldn't read the Denise Grover Swank book all my friends have been telling me I HAVE to read. (Okay, I cheated on both of those toward the end, but shhhhh!)
To really get myself moving, I posted it publicly that I'd be releasing Invincible by Christmas Eve. Facing angry teens from all over the world if I failed finally got me motivated and broke past my end-of-the-series anxiety.
So long story not so short, I hit 50k words on Invincible by November 28th. I missed my self-imposed deadline of Nov 30th to finish the book by two days and Finished on Dec 2nd, but I was pretty close, so I'm calling it a win. As depicted below :)
So...the plan...
Right now I'm working on editing Invincible and I plan to have it up for pre-order by December 12th, with the final release on Christmas Eve, because...that just seemed appropriate!
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