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Project Juneiverse

 Early on in this blog (I'm not going to link to it and embarrass myself) I said that self-publishing was doing the hard work from the wrong end; that the hard work didn't go into making the manuscript perfect enough for a major publisher to pick up, but instead went into notifying the world that your book existed and would anybody like to buy it, please. Please relax. I have rethought that particular perspective, so please don't expend the effort into defending independent publishing. I'm with you. The fourteen-odd novels I've crafted with the help of National Novel Writing Month somehow wove themselves into a unified world which I've taken to calling the Juneiverse, after the main character in a novel called Soft Places , which I tried to revise and submit to agents but got nowhere with. (The last time I reread it, I understood why.) I hope to retell June's story one day in a much better version, but first... The first NaNoWriMo I have successfully complet
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Excuse Note 4/23/2024

Please excuse Sheila from working on her novel today, as her evening was taken up with planting tomatoes, preparing feedback for tomorrow's writers group meeting, making lunch for the week, and taking a damn shower. Thank you.
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Excuse Note 4/17/2024

 Please excuse Sheila from working on her novel today, as her evening was spent making up the work hours she lost to oversleeping this morning. Sheila would also like to report that, as of yesterday, she has completed the reverse-engineered outline for Christophina's Garden  and is looking forward to completing the work as a whole. Thank you.
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Excuse Note 4/15/2024

 Please excuse Sheila from working on her novel today because she had a full day of work and a visit from a dear friend. Thank you.
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NaNoWriMo: The Aftermath

 I made it! That's really the overall feeling that comes out of this year's effort--I made it. How did I manage this with a full-time job? I know I've done it, repeatedly. But this year it was harder than it's been in a while. I lost a couple of evenings doing things that were not writing, and that days that I did write were under 1,000 words for a long stretch. One day, I only wrote 93 words. But I persisted, had a couple of high-volume days, and hit 50,000 a few days before the 30th.  The story is nowhere near complete--my outline is 26 chapters, plus epilogue, and I left off at the start of chapter 19. My master plan is to return to Christophina's Garden , create a new outline for what's been written and what has yet to be written, and then finish the thing!  After that, I'll finish up Christophina's Moon  and then work on revising all three books simultaneously to sift out the continuity errors. If I'm clever enough, I may be able to come up with
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NaNoWriMo Day 30: The End

 Wordcount (final): 52,176 First line of the day:  She’s asking so she can cash in on the hype while it’s still hyping. Last line of the day:  I look at the texture I’m working on, put Lenny in my pocket and go to the guest house. Bad summary: Young woman has phone conversation with art dealer. Makes sense in context:  I feel stupid the moment I ask that question.
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NaNoWriMo Day 28: Victory and Beyond

 Word count: 51,307 (reached 50,000 on Monday) This year, I did a chapter-by-chapter outline to guide me. There are twenty-six chapters, plus an epilogue, in the outline. I am currently on chapter eighteen. No, I don't expect to finish the narrative by Thursday. There is much said in the realms of novel-writing advice about the "mushy middle", the part when you are convinced that you suck as a writer and see no way forward. The trick is to persist, persist, persist until you get closer to the end and reach firmer ground. I seem to have reached the finish line in NaNoWriMo right in the midst of the mushy middle. Everything is awful and boring and I don't know if I'll ever be able to fix it. But, I do know the cure. Which is to keep writing and worry about the mess later. I plan to keep at it all the way to the 30th for a victory lap. Maybe I'll make it to chapter nineteen. First line of the day: Lost, because I didn't post here yesterday. Last line of the d
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