Write a best selling book

One of the things that I’m fascinated and passionate about finding out is what separates people who SUCCEED in business and life from people who end up miserable and living boring existences.

That’s going to be the genesis of my book. A dissection of successful entruprenuers who have gone from rags to riches and what it’s taken to get them there.

I’m planning to interview 100 of them over the next 2 years and really figure it out.

First interview scheduled next week :)

No clue, I think I might be able to right a book on…something. But no clue what. Writing is good, I am not very good at it, but hey. Why not try?

This is something that simply “has” to happen in my life. I’m a single mom, working as a lunch lady, and I’ve spent so much money on school loans for my MFA in Creative Writing, that I either need to write an intelligent and engaging work, or, fake my own death, assume a new identity, and hide from Sallie Mae for the rest of my life.

I have always thought I’d write a book ever since I can remember. It is a book that is insightful and witty. Maybe it imparts an important message the people will remember. Perhaps this is my bid for immortality.

I haven’t been posting for a bit… anyway, I did hit the 50 hour target for NaNoEdMo, but I haven’t finished the editing process on my novel. It didn’t go very well, mostly because I didn’t know what I was doing, even though I read some of the advice on the NaNoEdMo site.

I will revisit it soon (next couple of months I think) and re-edit it – I think I over complicated things, and also tried to ‘polish’ it too soon (which was a waste of time at this stage)

So, there’s still a way to go before I can say I’ve written by best seller!

I’m doing the editing as a NaNoEdMo exercise – 50 hours in one month (March)... and I’m more than halfway through (by hours anyway), having reread/proof-read the manuscript, corrected spelling and grammar mistakes, and done some detail checking…

I am now about to start the rewriting process – fixing and improving the writing, style, descriptive detail, characterisation etc. and adding new scenes. I think that should keep me busy until the end of the month, at least!

I finished it a few days ago, and am now resting up before the editing phase – http://www.nanoedmo.net – which happens in March.

I got to 61,000 words… I still haven’t reread it yet, but I know it needs a lot of work:
The characters are pretty wooden and similar, they need show different personality more, speak in personality, have different motivations etc. and back stories.
Also the descriptive text is minimal, which therefore needs expanding to help make the locale more realistic etc. but also including such things as weather, smells, sounds, passers by, day-to-day happenings like newspaper delivery, news from headlines and TV?
Another thing needing expanding is some second and possibly third stories. How to work in the second or third story lines – split chapters? e.g. a few pages of main story but with a few paragraphs of the other story lines breaking up the main story text.
Finally(?) the formatting needs to be set up better, ready for submission to an agent/publisher.
I’ll probably make a few notes and maybe do a read through in preparation for the March EdMo, but otherwise won’t be writing more until March, when I’ll add some updates here on how it goes.

So it’s February 15th, 2008 and I’ve been writing for just over two weeks – so roughly halfway through… I’ve been putting a lot of hours in, probably a few more than most other people would be able to roughly 2-3 hours every weekday and about 5-6 hours each Saturday and Sunday! And I’ve just past 43,000 words!

Apart from reading a paragraph or two before restarting each day, to remind me where I’m up to I haven’t reread the whole thing – no editing until you’re finished! Hence I don’t know if it’s any good at all yet.

Anyhow – back to writing!

OK, so I’ve started a novel! A few weeks ago I came across the www.nanowrimo.org site and after reading what that was about (National Novel Writing Month – November each year) I thought, “Yeah! Just 30 days?” So I got the book by Chris Baty, NaNoWriMo founder, via Amazon.
I was only part way through, when I discovered there was also a National Novel Editing Month (NaNoEdMo.org), which is in March each year. And here it was coming up to the end of January… Well, I’m ‘between jobs’ right now, so it seemed like a good time to start!

So I have! I started on 30th January (I miscalculated what with the leap year and it being 2 in the morning!) – so my deadline for 50,000 words is 29th February (I got an extra day, but then I restated after two days anyway, so it kind of evens out)

Today it’s 5th Feb, and by last night I’d just past the 10,000 word mark… so it’s going well so far… but in the book it does say the first week’s easy, then the second week is where you get writer’s block. Luckily there are ways around that – the main one being that it’s all about quantity, not quality. So with a few other trick I hope to get past that.

I may not get time post regularly during the month (or have writing energy left over), but I try and make an effort! Definitely will post again around the end of Feb though!

I’ve started a couple, but tend to dry up after a chapter or two – have trouble with characters and civilisation/empire’s names in my Sci-Fi one. Getting better at dialog (I think!), need work on descriptions and introducing them gradually, and making them interesting! (not alone in this, as some books I’ve read have had boring descriptive passages)