NaNoWriMo 2009 is over!

I won! Well, technically, I won NaNoWriMo several days ago, but I figured now that the event is over, I need to officially declare that. I’d post an icon with official NaNo art on it to declare that I won like I did last year, but uh, we recently wiped my computer and I don’t have the settings for my ftp program set up to allow me to upload images to our server. It happens. Still, I’m a little sad that I didn’t hit 75k like I wanted to (last year’s 100k just didn’t seem all that feasible with me working full time), but I got pretty close. 71,548 is nothing to sneeze at. Of course, I sneezed a lot this month which is probably the main reason that I didn’t reach my goal. It’s hard to write a novel when your brain’s so foggy that you can’t string two sentences together. Sleeping all the time to wile away the pain didn’t help either. Regardless, I won NaNo again this year, and I’m really excited that Ian likewise won. He had been hoping to keep his word count within at least 10,000 of mine, but well, I went a little crazy last night and wrote over 8,000 words, plowing ahead faster than he could keep up. It’s still cool that he won; this is his first year in doing so. I wonder what next year will be like. 🙂

As you can see from the previous post from the phone, I recently acquired a copy of my novel in large print as a proof copy to make sure everything’s the way it’s supposed to be. It’s pretty huge, actually. We measured it in comparison with the regular print copy, and it’s almost exactly twice the size though 1/8″ on the slightly shorter side. It’s crazy the difference going from 11 pt to 15 pt Times New Roman font can be. The point of getting proof copies (’cause seriously, there’s no way I’d wanna read that with as huge as the letters are) is so that I can officially get ISBNs for the books and have them listed in on-line booksellers. Two Minds Are Better Than One is already technically listed on Amazon.com, but the thing is that there’s no way to edit the description of the book to make it look more like a real entry versus the kind-of-crappy short entry that simply has a picture of the book, the book’s name, and my name. At least, I hope that getting the ISBN will let me go through and edit all that. I think that’s part of the point, as far as I understood it from the FAQ.

So I have a large print edition of the book now, and I also have a second copy of the regular print that actually has an ISBN and barcode on the back. The thing is, after setting the books up to get them distributed on places like Amazon, I actually went back and started re-reading the novel myself. (There are lots of times when I can’t write new content while on my breaks at work, and I wanted something to do besides sudoku on my phone.) There’s a HUGE glaring error (in my mind) on page seventeen, and while it’s not something that I would expect regular readers to notice (it’s not a typo; it’s a flaw in the continuum that can’t be made obvious until several books later), I notice it and it bugs me. Sure, I could technically retcon it and later explain it away using some sort of random excuse, but I’m not a big fan of reneging on my original words. Pfft. Dunno. I suspect that if I were to send up another draft, I would have to re-purchase yet more copies of the same books. I think I’ll hold off on doing that until I’ve read some more. If I find any other glaring errors such as typos that other readers have missed or other story inconsistencies that only I would really even know about, I might consider it. I guess I’ll hold off on validating the copies I received as OK to distribute until I’m further in the book. Of course, this sort of implies not working on the current novel, or at least taking a break from it, but to be honest, I had been having a lot of writer’s block in addition to the sinus trouble and the story has been progressing slowly. It can keep moving slow, and after all, I read really fast.

The next order of business is the second novel, Two’s company and Twenty-five’s an Army. It’s still unfinished. I’m seriously thinking about putting Book Four completely on hold while I finish out the last five chapters of Book Two. Then my difficulty is whether I continue to put Book Four on hold while I furiously try to get Book Two all typed up, edited, and ready for publication. It took nearly a month to type up all of Book One and edit it, and that was with half of the novel having already been typed up over the course of many years. Book Two has barely been put on the computer at all at this point. It could conceivably take most of December to type up and edit. That implies that I remain in the mood to work on it for that long too, lol. Perhaps I’ll get Book Four to a good stopping point, say, when Solennelle reaches the other kingdom she’s visiting, and then simply end there for the time being. I didn’t finish Book Three immediately after NaNo was done last year (and I have yet to finish editing it as well). We’ll see how it goes. I figure that since my sinuses seem to finally be on the mend, I might get something done beyond sleeping and playing on the DS.

To conclude so I can eat something before work, I’ve got a lot of noveling on my hands yet, and I won’t have much chance to work on it this afternoon or evening because I still haven’t come up with a project sheet for tonight’s crochet class. Been a bit distracted by the novels. Still distracted by the novels, obviously. And the sinuses. And that obnoxious patch of ringworm on my wrist. And reading fanfiction about gay lawyers from a video game. Yeah, it’s clear I have serious stuff on my mind. 😉

One thought on “NaNoWriMo 2009 is over!

  1. auntie 502

    CONGRATULATIONS!:

    On you and Ian winning NaNo! I know that a hit novel is in your future someday Erin! 🙂

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