NaNoFiMo!

Despite some moderate insanity today, I have not forgotten that it is the start of November and thus of my personal NaNoFiMo!

I have set myself three goals for this month.

1. Finish that one short story (henceforth known as The Thing With The Birds.)

2. Finish a half-finished thing (most likely the novella known as The Thing With The Goblins. It has Sings-to-Trees and is the precursor to Elf/Orc, so while I don’t promise that Elf/Orc will ever be continued, if I can get this done, it will be a step closer. On the other hand, it’s always possible that I’ll get inspired on one of the others and slather words on it instead. Still.)

3. Get the one YA novel (The Thing With The Hedgehog) to a good cut-off point (I know where that is, even!) and write the outline for the rest of the book and generally beat it into a shape where I can send it to my agent to ask if she can find somebody to pay me to finish it.

Okay. That probably won’t add up to 50K words, but I’m not real worried about the final word count–I’m worried about getting these projects to a point where I can move them on to the next stage of their existence.  Two of them have been hanging far too long, and the short story will fall off my radar and join the legions of unfinished projects if I don’t get cracking on it, so that’s the goal.

#3 is probably gonna be attainable in short order–I put in a thousand words on it today, and finishing one scene and poking it with a stick a few times will get it to the cut-off, and then it’s just outline. Really, a solid day or two on it should see it through. The other two will take however long they take, but I’m optimistic.

Meanwhile, I have to continue doing either a Digger & 2 Dragonbreath illos or 3 Dragonbreath illos a day, five days a week.  And write about half of the next Dragonbreath book–Campbreath–which is due January 3rd and which I’m not even figuring into the writing time yet.

Needless to say, now that I have all this writing to do, I am madly inspired to paint. Because that’s just how it works. But there’s something to be said for painting that feels like you’re getting away with something, so I’m not gonna complain.

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