NaNoWriMo Winner – Extreme Mickey!

So after thirty days of writing, I have assembled over my required 50,000 words to win NaNoWriMo for the second year. This time, I have a first draft in excess of 60,000 words titled “Deirdre Does Disney – An Irreverent Look At The House Of Mouse”. It’s a working title just like this book is a work in progress.

This has now become my November addiction. For me it’s not just “writing the same word 50,000 times or the art of writing total dreck. True, there are some people who can’t write just like there are some people who can’t sing or play a piano or train badgers to do the hula. However the lessons you learn in perseverance, discipline, and the accomplishment you get from reaching your goal or just trying is heads and shoulders over those who just make excuses and give up with no effort.

Will the Mickey book be as interesting as the Squirrel book? Only time will tell. Right now it is pretty rough. There was a time five days into NaNo when I hated everything about it and threw my baby right off a bridge. I just discarded what I wrote and started over from another direction and guess what? I was able to come back to that first section with a new perspective. Do certain things not work? Yup. Are there boring bits or bits that don’t make sense? Sure. Will some of the things I tossed get tossed again? Possibly or they will be re-written. That is the beauty of writing, you have the opportunity to redeem something that was hopeless.

Now what do I do? I finish the last few pages of my draft and put it away. I pick up the Squirrel book and finish the final draft on it. I also start sending out query letters (the bane of my existence because I suck at it) and see if I can get anyone interested in it.

The work never ends but hopefully the reward will be worth it.

Next up – the new look for Mickey in the gaming industry and why I’m excited!

NaNoWriMo – Novel Evolution

I have heard publishers dread December.  It’s not because of holiday shopping or bad Santas but they dread the flood of book submissions straight from NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month).  These idiot authors think writing a book in 30 days means it is fit to be seen by human beings, let alone sold in Barnes & Noble.  It’s not but try telling them that.

My BFF Kat, who is a working television writer, told me the secret of writing is in the re-writing.  Nothing could be more true.  Not even a room full of chimpanses can produce something stellar on the first go round.  Especially for chimps.  You need at least 8 revisions before you start to see something worth while.

So I am now done with the first revision of my book.  Then will have to dive into the second revision including adding a more solid story arch for the essays (thanks Kat & John for the advice) and rearranging a bunch of pages as well as writing new content that will amount to at least 1/4 of the now current page count of 185.

I was planning on enterting Script Frenzy in April to write a 100 page play.  Huh, yeah… right.  I have some ideas… Death Kills, Death Kills 2: Terror in Disneyland, The Night Shakespeare Died, or something totally different.  I have no idea how to write a play.  I have some ideas and I thought it would be a good exercise to bat them around like The Abomination on catnip and see what happens, even if it sucks.

However, I need to start putting my house in order and right now the book revisions from my November project come first.  It is going to be great.  Yay!  I feel better already.  So I will concentrate on the book, bead sleeves and IF I have time will work on the play.  And yes, my sister and Rhonda Frost do get a credit if I decide to go with Death Kills.