Help! I'm Drowning!

Not literally, of course, but every time I think I'm getting on top of my workload and have a bit of extra time to devote to my writing, something ELSE gets piled on!

I don't mean to complain. I really love my job, and as I've said before, I don't think I could write for a living. The pressure would dry up whatever fount of creativity I possess. Still I wouldn't mind having a little more time to work on my new novel...

Yes, you read that right. I'm 8K into a novel-length sequel to Her Secret Ingredient, my sexy short that comes out next Friday. I can't say anything more now (it's a secret... ) except that it's contemporary BDSM menage, and it's going to be even more fun than the short that inspired it.

I'm aiming to finish by year end - or the end of January at very latest. Don't ask me how.

I'll do it. I know I will. Meanwhile, I'm treading water, looking longingly at the shore.

I Did It!!

I'm feeling pretty darned good. Despite having a lot of other, extra, stuff thrown at me during November, I managed to fulfill my commitment and finish my new M/M novel Quarantine! It wasn't exactly a NaNoWriMo-level effort, but 25K isn't anything to sneeze at either, especially since I've been saddled with a new project and a brand new course to prepare. Anyway, I'm hoping to devote this coming weekend to edits, then cross my fingers and submit it!

Lots of other news to share with you today, too. I've drawn the winners for my blog tour giveaway. Congratulations to Naomi B. (Hot Spell) and Desi the Blonde (Wild About That Thing). You should have already received your books. Hope you enjoy them!

Meanwhile, if you didn't win, stay tuned. I promise I'll have more give-aways this month.

My free Christmas BDSM ménage story, Silver Bells, is now available. Just go to my free reading page and follow the link. You'll be taken to the Total-E-Bound site to read the tale. While you're there, check out the other items in the TEB newsletter.

Silver Bells will be available soon, as a PDF download with a sexy cover!

Last, but certainly not least, today's the start of Blissemass! Santa just might bring you a Kindle, if you pay visits to all of the naughty authors participating!

NaNoWriMo - Well, Not Exactly!

It's November, and as many an author can tell you, November is National Novel Writing Month, or "NaNoWriMo" for short. NaNoWriMo is a challenge, a movement, a community, and more. You can read about its history in Wikipedia, but basically, when you participate in NaNoWriMo, you make an attempt to write at least 50,000 words of a new novel between November 1st and November 30th.

You're allowed to plan, working on characters, plot and so on, before the start of November, and of course you're allowed (expected) to spend time after November revising and polishing the book. During November, you just write. The objective is to force you to produce, to write on a regular basis, and to avoid the trap of working and reworking the same prose, over and over, rather than making progress toward completing your work.

Lots of my writer friends are "doing NaNo" this year. I feel a bit left out. However, I know better than to sign on to NaNoWriMo myself. I could do it - that's less than 2000 words per day, and I can easily produce 3-4K on the days I write. The problem is I can't write every day. There are too many other things going on in my life that I have to attend to. If I committed to NaNo, though, I'd force myself, thereby doing violence to both my peace of mind and my relationship with my husband (who respects my writing but also views it as less important than making a serious living).

I have made a NaNo commitment to myself, though. During November, I'm going to finish the first draft of my M/M speculative fiction erotic romance Quarantine. I've been working on this book for more than a year. The trouble is, I haven't been working steadily. There have been whole months when I haven't written a word because I had to give other writing projects priority. Well, this month, I'm going to clear that guilt away!

I have, I estimate, about 20K left to go. I wrote 4K yesterday. If I could do that every day...

I'm not going to dwell on my failures! Today I had other matters I had to deal with. I'll go back to it tomorrow...

Meanwhile, I hope that making my commitment public will help me to fulfill it. Because I know I have readers waiting for this book. All I need to do is get it done!

Write or Die

Yesterday I finished my latest work in progress and submitted it to Total-E-Bound. It's a M/F paranormal novella called "Hot Spell", featuring a gorgeous, tanned hero who just happens to be a Fire Elemental. All in all, I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out, but it's a bit of a departure for me in several ways. Most notably, about a third of the book was written in timed "sprints" using the tools at Write or Die.

Let me give you some background. I've been working on this tale since mid-May, and having a terrible time. I found myself editing and re-editing every sentence, as I was writing. Not only was this non-productive, it was also no fun at all!

I posted a blog about my problem, called Dirty Little Secret, and received a raft of comments from other authors. Some were sympathetic, commiserating and confessing they suffer the same malady ("Get out of my head!"). Others offered specific suggestions for improving my spontaneity and shutting off the internal editor.

My Australian colleague Maggie Nash mentioned that she sometimes used something called Write or Die to break through those kinds of blocks. When I asked her what this was, she sent me to Dr. Wicked's site. The next time I sat down for a writing session, I thought I'd give it a try.

So what is Write Or Die? Basically, it's a tool for timed writing. You choose a word count goal and a time limit, then press "Write". You are presented with a blank screen, which you then proceed to fill with words, as fast as you can. The application tracks both the clock (counting down) and your word count. When you're done, you click a button and the tool tells you how much you wrote, and how long it took, then displays the text to you to be copied and pasted into your story document. I gather that in some of the more stringent modes the text will actually disappear if you don't make your count within the requested time. Needless to say, I didn't try that!

Maggie said she couldn't do more than 30 minutes at a time. I was less ambitious. I tried 10 minutes and 300 words. I made my goal, the very first time I tried!

I was amazed and proud. Even more surprising, when I pasted the 300 words into my story and massaged them a bit, I found they weren't bad at all. Certainly they were not noticeably worse than the paragraphs I'd been laboring over the previous week.

So I went back to do another ten minute sprint, and then another. The first day, I did six sprints (interspersed with edits) and produced almost 2000 words. And guess what? It was fun - far more fun, at least, than the self-scrutinizing composition I'd been doing previously.

I found that Write or Die worked particularly well for sex scenes. The prose that came out of my sprints had a rushed, breathless quality that fit the emotional tone of a heated encounter. (Probably wouldn't work as well for slow, sensuous love scenes!)

I didn't write the entire remaining book using Write or Die. But when I seemed to be getting stuck, I'd hop over and pound out a couple of 300 word chunks, to shake myself loose. I found that my ability to produce during the sprints improved, too. By the time I finished the book, I was generating 320 to 350 words in ten minutes.

I gather that Dr. Wicked, the author of Write or Die, created the tool to help him do NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). The objective of NaNoWriMo is to produce at least 50K of a novel in one month. Quantity, not quality, is the focus. You're only allowed to edit after the month ends.

I still don't know if I want to commit to NaNoWriMo, even with the help of Write or Die. I'm not sure I could stand the stress of sprints longer than 10 minutes. By the time I finished one, I felt like I'd been on the exercise bike, my heart pounding, my breathing ragged. I don't know if I could physically handle half an hour or more!

But after my experience with "Hot Spell", I'm very tempted to try!

(By the way, Dr. Wicked also has a desktop version of Write or Die, which he sells for $10. I haven't tried that, but that's what Maggie Nash told me she uses.)

The NaNo Appeal

By Yolanda Sfetsos (Guest Blogger)

When I was trying to figure out what to write about today, I just couldn't go past NaNoWriMo. It's a subject that I find hard to ignore around this time of the year.

If you haven’t heard of National Novel Writing Month, it’s always set in November. It’s a time of the year when a whole bunch of people from all over the world come together with the joint goal of writing a 50,000-word novel during the month of November. Or at least, a first draft.

I know there are some people who don't like it because they don’t like the pressure, and find it stifles their creativity. There are even some who find this process encourages them to write garbage that’ll end up stuffed in a drawer somewhere, or forgotten on their computer. Then there are others who absolutely love it, because they like a challenge, or manage to drum out a first draft in no time anyway.

Personally, I love it. This is the fifth year that I've taken part. I've actually won every year so far, so I'm hoping that the same happens in 2010. As it stands, while I'm writing this, I've already passed the 44,000-word mark, which is awesome for halfway through the month.

See, I write pretty fast drafts anyway. When I've got a story boiling over inside my head and it's ready to be told, I become consumed by it—live, breathe, think, and even dream about it, until that last word is written. I like to get everything out of my head and onto a Word document as quickly as I can, so this process works for me. And this year's story is turning out to be the same.

To be honest, I usually decide on the story I'm going to write in about August/September and then spend some of October taking notes and planning a bit. This year didn't turn out that way. I’ve been doing so many edits and revisions that I hardly thought about NaNo.

I actually didn't seriously admit to myself that I was going to take part until pretty late in October. How could I pass it up? Even if I knew I'd be getting a bunch of edits for other stories sometime this month, I at least wanted to give it a go. Like my husband said to me: “What's the worst that can happen? You either end up with the beginning of a story, or actually finish writing another book.” Exactly! Why didn't I think of that? ;) Sometimes it takes someone else to point out the obvious, that’s why I usually chat with my husband when I’ve come to a crossroads in my writing plans, or am wondering about what to tackle next. He’s awesome like that, and helps me bounce ideas and plans around until it all makes sense and fits together.

So with some multi-tasking, I've managed to do both writing and edits. It's been great so far.

As for what story I ended up writing -- well, I had a new release at the beginning of October with Eternal Press, called TOUCHING MOONLIGHT. It's a futuristic story about two clans. One's called the Lunar, the other the Solar. It's the story of what happens when a Solar female and a Lunar male end up falling in love and uncover some dark secrets together...

I loved the editing process so much that while I was working on edits with my lovely editor (Hi Andrea!) I actually started getting snippets, ideas, and an almost-complete storyline for the next (and last) installment. I always knew that Sunny & Silver would have two parts to their story. I just didn't realize I'd write it so soon.

So, here I am, having a blast writing a sequel for NaNoWriMo. I can't wait to finish it, put it aside until next year, and then get cracking on revisions until it’s ready to submit.

What about you? Are you a NaNoWriMo fan? Have you ever taken part? And if so, did it work for you? I'm always curious to hear about other writer’s experiences with the process. :)

Thanks for reading!

~ Yolanda

BIO: Yolanda Sfetsos lives in Sydney, Australia with her husband, daughter, and cat. She loves to spend most of her days writing stories. Her muse doesn't like genre restrictions, and loves to toe the dark, otherworldly edge of storytelling.

When she’s not writing she spends as much time as possible with her small family. She also enjoys watching movies, TV shows, anime, going for walks, and reading.

You can visit her website at www.yolandasfetsos.com