Amanda Frederickson's Blog: Musings - Posts Tagged "project"
Bird By Bird
Here's what's happening. I've been participating in National Novel Writing Month for nine years now and since it's a non-profit organization I try to donate toward their operating costs when I can (they also run awesome things like the Young Writers' Program for kids and teens). Circumstances being what they are this year, I'm even poorer than usual and I'm not going to be able to make my usual donation.
So I'm going to see if I can kill several birds with one month.
Smashwords.com is going to be running a promotion for NaNoWriMo. Anyone who signs up will be able to "publish" their book as a work in progress as they write. Ordinarily I'd be running from this idea, screaming. Especially when it comes to self publishing, everything put out for the public consumption needs to be the best that it can be.
On the other hand, a freshly published author's worst enemy is obscurity. Marketing and book pitches aren't exactly my strong suit either; it's part of why I chose to self publish Keystone.
So, I decided to go for it and "publish" this year's Nano project as a sort of open beta read. It's going to be a "reader sets the price" option so if someone wants to contribute toward my Nano donation goal of $25 they can, otherwise they can read it for free. As a bonus for enduring the book's rough state, everyone who opts in for this experimental project will get the final, published work for the absolute bargain price of whatever they chose to pay for it.
However, being a work in progress, the Nano project may or may not contain things like this: [King Needsaname] [Dang, it's hard to type while eating][Why did I think this was a good idea?] [He needs to DIE]. Consider them bloopers. Behind the scenes commentary. The product of too much caffeine and sugar without adequate sleep. It happens a lot during NaNoWriMo.
I'd love for this to be an interactive experience, so readers can tell me what they'd like to see (or not see) as the book progresses, so to that end I'm going to be starting a Facebook author page, which I think is a little more easily accessible than Goodreads. Also I can post when there's a fresh updates without cluttering up this blog. I also have some cool bonus materials planned (Thanks Katrina Shelley for some great ideas!).
I'm really getting excited about this one, but I'm getting crazy nervous too. I've been getting perfectionistic in my old age, so the prospect of exposing my work before it's finished is very daunting. That's another bird I'm hoping to kill: the stark terror of showing my work to those outside my familiar circles.
Let's go bird hunting.
Coming next: project details and why this might be my best NaNoWriMo ever!
So I'm going to see if I can kill several birds with one month.
Smashwords.com is going to be running a promotion for NaNoWriMo. Anyone who signs up will be able to "publish" their book as a work in progress as they write. Ordinarily I'd be running from this idea, screaming. Especially when it comes to self publishing, everything put out for the public consumption needs to be the best that it can be.
On the other hand, a freshly published author's worst enemy is obscurity. Marketing and book pitches aren't exactly my strong suit either; it's part of why I chose to self publish Keystone.
So, I decided to go for it and "publish" this year's Nano project as a sort of open beta read. It's going to be a "reader sets the price" option so if someone wants to contribute toward my Nano donation goal of $25 they can, otherwise they can read it for free. As a bonus for enduring the book's rough state, everyone who opts in for this experimental project will get the final, published work for the absolute bargain price of whatever they chose to pay for it.
However, being a work in progress, the Nano project may or may not contain things like this: [King Needsaname] [Dang, it's hard to type while eating][Why did I think this was a good idea?] [He needs to DIE]. Consider them bloopers. Behind the scenes commentary. The product of too much caffeine and sugar without adequate sleep. It happens a lot during NaNoWriMo.
I'd love for this to be an interactive experience, so readers can tell me what they'd like to see (or not see) as the book progresses, so to that end I'm going to be starting a Facebook author page, which I think is a little more easily accessible than Goodreads. Also I can post when there's a fresh updates without cluttering up this blog. I also have some cool bonus materials planned (Thanks Katrina Shelley for some great ideas!).
I'm really getting excited about this one, but I'm getting crazy nervous too. I've been getting perfectionistic in my old age, so the prospect of exposing my work before it's finished is very daunting. That's another bird I'm hoping to kill: the stark terror of showing my work to those outside my familiar circles.
Let's go bird hunting.
Coming next: project details and why this might be my best NaNoWriMo ever!
Sometimes the Magic Works
It's funny how October 31st is still one of my favorite days of the year, but not for entirely the same reasons. The costume and candy anticipation has turned to character and plot anticipation. Don't get me wrong, costumes and candy are still the highlights of Halloween, but on the stroke of midnight, like a reverse Cinderella's carriage, All Hallows Eve becomes Day One of National Novel Writing Month.
Magic hour.
I looked back over my past Nanowrimo books and realized this will be my tenth November Nanowrimo project (don't ask me how that math works out; nine years but ten books). It makes my plans all the more fitting.
Way back in 2004 when I discovered the madness that is Nano, I had two weeks to decide and plan my project. At that time my friends and I were very active role players and any given free time that found a handful of us together resulted in random "moshes," in which each of us picked a character and someone picked a setting. With nothing more than that we built amazing stories together.
One stormy evening found a few of us with nothing to do, so we decided that we were in the common room of an inn on a stormy night. Instead of picking from my regular stable of characters, I decided to pull out a concept that had been fluttering in the back of my mind since high school. She was a traveling piper named Nakkita, and she had a secret: she was a runaway kidnapped princess. I just didn't know what to do with her.
I couldn't have known that her story wouldn't be complete without Kharduval August, the loyal knight, or Latasha Gildersleeve, the werewolf Moonsinger. I stole them (with permission from Nee-chan and Tree) and the seeds of Peasant Queen were planted.
I wrote the manuscript in a flurry of handwritten and typed pages, sliding under the wire on November 30th to score my first win. Needless to say it was thoroughly addicting even though my next two Nano novels barely made it off the ground.
To this day I consider Peasant Queen and Masquerade to be my best Nanowrimo novels. Peasant Queen was also the only time that I've written an actual ending during Nanowrimo. However, the manuscript had one fatal flaw. It had no middle. Right around the end of week three I skipped over half the guts and glory of the whole ordeal and went straight to the lead-up of the climax.
So this year for my tenth Nanowrimo project I'm dusting off Peasant Queen and rewriting it from stem to stern, guts and all. And I'm posting it all on Smashwords as I go.
It's going to be mayhem. Hopefully the good kind.
My Facebook author page is up and as mentioned before I'll be posting there when manuscript updates are live. I'll also be putting up my working map, portraits of characters, some settings and whatever other goodies I come up with as things go. You can find the page here: https://www.facebook.com/amandalfrede...
I hope you join me!
(Writing for Nanowrimo? Write with me! Add me as a writing buddy here: http://nanowrimo.org/participants/sar...)
Magic hour.
I looked back over my past Nanowrimo books and realized this will be my tenth November Nanowrimo project (don't ask me how that math works out; nine years but ten books). It makes my plans all the more fitting.
Way back in 2004 when I discovered the madness that is Nano, I had two weeks to decide and plan my project. At that time my friends and I were very active role players and any given free time that found a handful of us together resulted in random "moshes," in which each of us picked a character and someone picked a setting. With nothing more than that we built amazing stories together.
One stormy evening found a few of us with nothing to do, so we decided that we were in the common room of an inn on a stormy night. Instead of picking from my regular stable of characters, I decided to pull out a concept that had been fluttering in the back of my mind since high school. She was a traveling piper named Nakkita, and she had a secret: she was a runaway kidnapped princess. I just didn't know what to do with her.
I couldn't have known that her story wouldn't be complete without Kharduval August, the loyal knight, or Latasha Gildersleeve, the werewolf Moonsinger. I stole them (with permission from Nee-chan and Tree) and the seeds of Peasant Queen were planted.
I wrote the manuscript in a flurry of handwritten and typed pages, sliding under the wire on November 30th to score my first win. Needless to say it was thoroughly addicting even though my next two Nano novels barely made it off the ground.
To this day I consider Peasant Queen and Masquerade to be my best Nanowrimo novels. Peasant Queen was also the only time that I've written an actual ending during Nanowrimo. However, the manuscript had one fatal flaw. It had no middle. Right around the end of week three I skipped over half the guts and glory of the whole ordeal and went straight to the lead-up of the climax.
So this year for my tenth Nanowrimo project I'm dusting off Peasant Queen and rewriting it from stem to stern, guts and all. And I'm posting it all on Smashwords as I go.
It's going to be mayhem. Hopefully the good kind.
My Facebook author page is up and as mentioned before I'll be posting there when manuscript updates are live. I'll also be putting up my working map, portraits of characters, some settings and whatever other goodies I come up with as things go. You can find the page here: https://www.facebook.com/amandalfrede...
I hope you join me!
(Writing for Nanowrimo? Write with me! Add me as a writing buddy here: http://nanowrimo.org/participants/sar...)
