NaNoWriMo Update

I took a moment tonight to review my progress to date. At the beginning of NaNoWriMo, every participant needs to average 1,667 words per day to reach the goal of 50,000 words in a month. I had originally hoped to manage a few more words per day, for a total of 80,000 words in the month. That will never happen now; I would have to finish the novel in December.

I have managed to write, to date, 6,975 words. That means that, if I could write at a pace of 2,689 words per day, I could still "win" NaNoWriMo. With all the other things I have to do, I sincerely doubt that will happen. I'm a little too old to live on one night's sleep every three days. Yet, there is still a slight chance I will catch fire, and write so quickly in the few moments I can snatch I will be able to keep up.

On the other hand, I may only mange a dribble of words, a few per day, as I've done so far. I'll keep you posted, but please don't expect too many long posts while I struggle towards the finish line. I'll try to manage a few, but most of my posts will be short, one or two paragraph updates. I'm sure some of my readers are curious about my novel; it will, of course, require some (and probably a great deal of) editing when it's finished.

Once I have it edited to my satisfaction, I will put it up on LuLu.com - before it goes on sale, I'll probably offer free e-books to a select group of loyal readers. I wish I could promise that to you as a Christmas gift, but there is no chance I will have time to finish editing so soon. I hope at least a few of you will be looking forward to its release, however.

It is not the sort of book a mainstream publisher is likely to ever want to handle. It has elements of steampunk science fiction, fantasy, and some more serious issues thrown in. The plot is too complex to tell you much in the few moments I have right now, but it is about a blind assassin and a rather studious princess. I fear my description sounds awful; you'd have to read the book to understand how I pull this all together.

In many ways, it is an experiment, an effort to shatter genre walls, and to challenge the reader's preconceptions. I am very sure it will not be remembered as my greatest masterpiece, but I hope to learn something from writing it. Writing is a process of continually learning and stretching boundaries. If a writer does nothing but recapitulate what they've already written, where is the point in a new work?

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In a completely unrelated footnote: first, I want to apologise to those of you whose links in your comments disappeared. That occurred during the changeover of my blog to Blogger Beta, and I had no control over it. I didn't even realise it would happen until I noticed a link that had worked that morning was not there...

I also want to apologise to many of you whose blogs I read. I have left some comments that never appeared (and on unmoderated blogs, so that wasn't the problem) and in some cases, I've tried to leave a comment, but the "comment box" opens completely blank, so I'm unable to do anything. I can think of at least five or six blogs I've tried leaving comments on, some multiple times, without any luck. So I'm sorry if I seem to be ignoring you. Blame Blogger...