EXCITING writing news! PLUS NaNoWriMo!

So, let me lead with the news I can now officially share with the world: After querying my latest novel, Lorelei and the Sea, I’ve signed with The Jenks Agency and will be represented by Carolyn Jenks!

Even as I’m typing those words, now, I still can’t quite believe it actually happened. It has been a CRAZY ride, you guys, and I know it’s only just getting started. From the very first email, I thought it was too good to be true–and then I spoke with Carolyn Jenks on the phone and, as nervous as I was, she immediately made me feel comfortable. Not only that, but she was excited about my book and even excited about the ideas I had for books I still want to write. I feel incredibly lucky to have had things work out so well this far, guys, and I’m absolutely, 100% excited to share everything with you here as things progress!

For today, though, while I’m still sorting my brain out, I want to take a look back at the PAST. Let’s take a time-jump to NaNoWriMo 2009.

These are the notes for my very first novel, The Names We Chose. I’d first heard of NaNoWriMo in 2008, but I heard about it halfway through November and felt like I’d missed out on too much already to join in. When 2009 came around, I was nervous but ready! I met the fantastic local NaNo group in Gainesville and immediately the excitement was infectious.

That month was hard. It wasn’t just the daily word count, though. I, perhaps, hadn’t realized that the book would always be on my mind, even when I wasn’t writing. I have over 50 pages of hand written notes just because I couldn’t stop thinking about it! I only recently read On Writing by Stephen King, and he described the process of writing the first draft as excavating a fossil. There’s something buried under the ground and you’re digging frantically to uncover it, to find the shape of the thing, and you have to do it quickly. That’s the way it felt, this mad dash to get information on the page, to realize what happened next, and so on.

I managed to finish the 50K for NaNoWriMo, and I went on to write another 50K and finish the book in December. It was the first novel sized project I’d ever done. I tried to edit it, it even got to the point where a few months later I’d decided to rewrite the entire thing. I still haven’t been able to do that particular book justice, but one day I’ll come back to it and be able to tell that story the way it needs to be told.

NaNoWriMo ’09 taught me how exciting writing could be, and it also taught me the importance of writing every day and that with the first draft you just have to keep pushing. Lorelei and the Sea wasn’t a NaNoWriMo novel, but it was certainly built on all of the things I learned that first November, and so it seems perfect to me that I get to announce all of this to you at the start of the new NaNoWriMo.

I hope all of you other NaNo folks out there are hitting your word count and having a blast! Now, I have to go get my daily words in so I don’t fall behind!

I owe the blog a Friday Reads and the book I’m finishing now, The Charnel Prince is absolutely one I want to talk about here. I’ll probably end up posting about that tomorrow!