Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Getting to those magic words

I've made it to about 32,000 words in my nano book. I'm really getting impatient with it. The writing is terrible, the story banal, the plot more of a plod. I like the main characters, but they never have engaged my imagination the way my best characters do.

So I decided today that I'm going to wrap it up as soon as possible. Tomorrow's my day off, so this is my goal: tomorrow I will finish my nano book. I won't get to 50,000 words, of course, but I'll get to "the end." Then I can go back to my Bell-Men rewrites and I'll just count any additional words I write on my nano count.

I like that idea! Cam has been really patient with me, especially considering that I left her in the middle of a scene where she's been kidnapped by vampires and she thinks all her friends have been killed, but she's getting really insistent about me getting back to her.

13 comments:

Richard said...

I like this plan! I'm excited about this! You should start on it at once. Definitely.

I keep starting new books for Skunk Cat Book Reviews, but for some reason I've hit a stretch of awful ones in a row: I've managed to finish one in four (and you saw the review of the one). Currently trying to get through Dead Space, but I feel like I'm straining my eyeballs through a colander. Ick.

It doesn't help, I suppose, that every time I realize my current book blows I turn to a favorite and re-read it instead. I've gone through... ummm... four in the last few weeks. Sigh. Maybe I'll just cheat and review one of those. Heh.

Have fun terminating the nano book!

K.C. Shaw said...

Half my reviews so far have been of books I've read a million times. There's nothing wrong with that!

When you come down next week, you can borrow all the books you like from my shelves. :)

Aaron Polson said...

I think this sounds like a very sensible idea. You can slap palm trees on the cover and make photocopies at Kinkos, selling it for a dollar a piece on busy street corners.

I really need to read Bell-Men.

BT said...

Excellent plan. To be honest, I've been waiting for an announcement of this kind from you for a while. I've been mega impressed with your determination to keep going rather than turn back to Bell-Men, but I think your plan is an excellent decision.

K.C. Shaw said...

Aaron--Or I can sell it to PublishAmerica! Gosh, I hope they like it! :p

BT--I had hoped that this would turn out to be a really fun side project, and that at the end of November I could go back to Bell-Men and also have a newly completed novella to revise later. It just didn't work out that way. Still, it's all a learning experience, right?

BT said...

Right, and it's given you some time away so you'll have at least partially refreshed eyes when looking at Bell-Men.

Over all, it's been a very good thing.

K.C. Shaw said...

And the nano book is probably not all that bad, actually; I might eventually come back to it and expand it into a real book.

Danielle Birch said...

Sounds like a good idea. And at least you can go back to the NaNo story later - maybe putting it aside for a while will do it good.

K.C. Shaw said...

I'm hoping that after I'm done with Bell-Men, my nano book will seem a lot more interesting and full of potential. I suspect it's pretty solid at its core.

Cate Gardner said...

Yay, for Bell Men. Though I'm convinced you'll go back to your NaNo book too and make something of it.

K.C. Shaw said...

Well, I read it over this morning and it's actually much, much better than I thought. Which is a problem, because now I need to give it a proper ending.

Words written so far today = zero. *sighs*

Fox Lee said...

By now she might have Stolkholm syndrome ; )

K.C. Shaw said...

I wouldn't be surprised. Those vampires are wicked sexy as well as being mind-controllers. :)