NaNoWriMo the Count Down has Begun

National Novel Writing Month begins on November 1^st; this will be the second time I am going to be taking this adventure.  But before I can start a new project, I have to clear my desk of currently pending projects and that is no small feat.

Currently I have four active projects on my desk.  The first is fine-tuning the hard copy of my first novel “The One Percent.”http://www.amazon.com/One-Percent-BOOK-ONE  I thought I would easily finish this project this month, but after receiving my proof and having a couple of people read through the copy, I have realized that there were a number of changes that need to be made.  Some of them I have already made. Now I am waiting on receiving the proof back, to determine which if any of the proposed edits I want to keep.  So this project is waiting on me waiting.  If I do not finish it in October, it will not eat away too much time in November.

The next project is a re-write of my next novel, “Close Corp” this is the follow up to “One Percent,” orinally it was the second half of the first book but who wants to read a 700 page book.  So I cut it into two pieces.  Going into this re-write, I knew that major changes would be made.  I saw what I had as a rough outline of where I wanted the story to go, but what has happened is a change in course that moves the books in a very interesting direction down my original path but in a very different way.  This process is coming in bits and pieces. Currently, what I have seems to be a puzzle that is almost complete, I have one piece left but it just will not fit where it should.  As I read and re-read what I have, it just feels off.  So for the next week, I will spend a good amount of time beating my head against that wall.  I cannot wait to see what I get done, but maybe putting it away for a month will be a good idea.

The next project I am working on is a novel called “The Veil,” this novel is a delusion wrapped in a hallucinatory nightmare that questions what is reality and insanity.  It has been very fun to plan out the book, and how I am going to tell a story that takes place in three relative times simultaneously.  I have the outline done and have a number of ideas how I am going to tell the story. Now I need to spend a couple of days and flush it out completely.  Looking at my list, I can hear the clock ticking faster and faster. 

The final project that I am actively working on is a novel that I began last year during NaNoWriMo.  I have the first draft, I have revised the first draft, which I had a friend read and edit. N ow I am sitting on those edits and ideas on how to improve the novel.

So, as I sit here looking at this list of projects.  I ask myself why I am taking on a new project.  What purpose will it serve?  And do I have the time?  Looking back over the last 18 months of writing and re-writing and editing, one comment has stuck with me: I tend to write only beautiful people, and always from the perspective of what that character in the best light would be. Looking back on this I see this as a major flaw in my writing and harmful to character development.  Though it might take me away from my current work, if I am able to accomplish this challenge it will only improve my other projects. 

The challenge of this next project is not to write a novel that will be read by people, or even ever finished.  It is a writing project to see if I can write about people at their worst, ugliest, and pettiest.  If I am able to do this, then I will write better characters in all my work.  

So do I have the time to undertake a project that has no future but a writing exploration?  I feel that I have to make the time for these types of projects, if I want to  move beyond being an armature author, to something better.  Though writing is an art form, it is also a skill that can be honed and developed. I believe that an author does not take the time to work on: developing new writing skills,  work on subjects that might not come naturally to them, and push their limits, will become stagnate and worse irrelevant. 

With this in mind, I am using NaNoWriMo as a developmental tool, so for the next month I will focus on developing a different writing styles, and writing different types of characters.  Because this is the task I have set out, I will be stepping away from my normal genre of Sci-Fi dystopian novels with strong female leads, and write about real life.  In addition, I will be blogging about how this process is going, and what I am taking away from the process.  I will post excerpts of what I am working on, as well as updates on if I am making my word counts.  Hopefully people with tell me just how much it sucks,  so I can make improvements.

I am  also going to take  this NaNoWriMo one step further,  not only will I focus on writing the Red Book expose,  I will work on editing Cave City last year’s bounty from NaNoWriMo.  But first, let’s see if I can clear my desk of Project 1, 2, and 3.

Here I go; it is going to be a long, fast, and hard November.