To NaNo or Not to NaNo - That is Always the Question

To NaNo or Not to NaNo - That is Always the Question

I know, it's only September, but this is the time of year I usually start planning for NaNo. Well that's if I have a plan. A time or two I have just jumped in and hoped for inspiration.

Just in case you don't know what I'm talking about NaNo is NaNoWriMo - or National Novel Writing Month and happens every November. The idea is to write a novel of at least 50K words in a month. There is a website and lots of things to help you achieve your goal as well as having other events through the year to help you actually polish the novel.

I usually use November to start a new book and get it well on it's way or to finish one that I have just started. I have also used it for fanfic projects.

NaNo is a great way for those of us with a procrastination problem to focus and get things done. The daily word counts etc are very useful as a gentle reminder to get our posteriors in gear :). If you haven't tried it before I recommend giving it a go. It's the perfect help for getting the first draft down since the idea is not to perfect the text, but just to get it on paper.

However...

After some thought, this year I have decided not to do NaNo. First and foremost my choice is based on the fact I don't have a new novel I want to finish at the moment. Instead I have decided to take November to finish the rewrite of Cat's Call and the re-formatting of Cat's Creation and Cat's Confidence so they are ready for paperback in time for Christmas.

I had hoped to have them ready long before this, but let's just say life got in the way and leave it at that. The new covers are done at least :).

When I read through the books to start editing them for paperback the first thing that was blatantly obvious was that the first half of Cat's Call just doesn't have the same flow as the latter half or the other two books. Hence I am rewriting it and Cat's Call will get its second edition. It will be the same story, just smoothed out with the help of my editor :). One of the advantages of it being an eBook until now is that I can make the changes and everyone who already has a copy will be automatically updated.

I'm going to be using a lot of paper in November, but I promise to recycle it. As I learned with Dead Before Dawn: The Vampire Curse, the only way to do a final proof read is to print it out and go through with a red pen. The number of typos, extra spaces etc that slip through if very surprising.

I also want to use November to get a head start on lots of the short stories for Free Fiction Friday. On the first Friday of every month we're giving away a free short story to our Wittegen Press Newsletter members. All the details are here if you would like to know more. If you would like to see what stories have been posted so far click here to see the Free Fiction Friday tag.

Are you doing NaNo this year? Do you find the camaraderie and word count useful? What tips do you have to beat procrastination?