Write1Sub1--Month 11: November (+NaNoWriMo)

I didn't expect to write a new short story for November; instead I fully expected to concentrate on my NaNoWriMo story. And that's what happened.

However, somewhere in the last week I fell off--I was ahead of the NNWM daily word count up to mid-month, but about 7 days went by that I didn't write a single word, and a few had word counts so pitiful, they might as well had been 0 days.

It ended up that I had 35k on day 29 and had to write over 15k on the last day--which I did! So cutting it closer than ever before, I made 51k somewhere between 10 & 11pm on the last day.

Phew!

The result: a super rough first draft--horrifically so (although now that I've been editing it for the past week plus, it's not as horribly mangled as I remember).

I'm currently editing chapter 12 of 20, with plans to have a beta-readable copy by Dec-15.

I've fallen off a bit over the past 2 days but with a steady daily average of almost 2 chapters/day from here on, I'll be fine. Unfortunately, this is just a story/event timeline edit, and it definitely needs a prose edit before going to beta hands. Heck, I'm even embarrassed emailing backup copies to myself, paranoid such a raw form might one day be discovered.

This particular story is special to me--it is a collaborative effort between my husband and me: he's the originator of the story--a super marketable idea I thought--and he provided me the partial skeleton. I'm making a breathing being out of this thing.

I can't wait 'til it's ready to be queried to lit agents--I really have a lot of faith in this story selling easily (unlike my current single polished novel which I'm sure will one day find a home, later than sooner).

December's not looking too good for W1S1 either! (Although I might attempt squeezing one in once the current novel's in beta hands and before the Xmas festivities).

My motivation for W1S1 has been waning anyway--after writing about 18 new stories, submitting 17 of them and having sold none of them so far, my fire has faded.

I honestly think only about 5-7 of them are sellable to good markets (which is still a good amount considering this is my first year seriously writing short stories).

W1S1 has been super successful for me despite the lack of sales, but I can't keep it up next year.

I may or may not still attempt a few anthologies but I'm definitely concentrating on novels next year as laid out in this post.

ETA--Made 15 short story submissions in November.