Storytellersunplugged

Where Words Meet

Busman’s Holiday

….Kelley Armstrong

I’ll be keeping it short this month. I’m on vacation, and I have a lot of writing to do. Yes, writing. Novel writing to be exact…which is exactly how I spend the rest of my year.

Crazy, right? Probably, but there’s a method to my madness.

I’ve written a lot in the past six years. Seven novels, four novellas, countless short stories. For the first few years, I was always ahead of schedule, scanning the horizon for my next project.

As my series grows more popular, though, the “non-writing” stuff (promotion, correspondence, accounting, etc.) takes up an increasing amount of time. That’s the first thing about being a full-time writer that I didn’t expect. The second thing? The pressure. At first, no one cared when my next book came out. When readers started caring, it was an amazing feeling…right up until I saw Amazon.co.uk taking orders for a book I’d barely started writing. Still, like the “business” stuff, it comes with the territory, and it doesn’t make this anything less than the dream job it is.

Like everyone, though, no matter how much I love my job, every now and then I need a break. But I don’t need a break from writing–I need a break from expectations and deadlines. So I signed up for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), to attempt to write a 50,000 novel in a month.

Crazy? Probably. But here’s my thinking…

This month, I’ll take a break from all my non-writing work. Instead, I’ll concentrate on writing–writing for no purpose other than the joy of telling a story, one that’s been bouncing around in my head for about a year. It’s not part of my paranormal series or my upcoming crime series, meaning there are no expectations. I don’t plan to try to sell it. So, if I never finish it, that’s fine. If it’s crap, that’s fine, too. For one month, it’s all about the writing and, for me, that’s a vacation. With any luck, I’ll come out of this with my head a little clearer, refreshed and ready to dive into my next “real” book.

Will it work? Will I hit 50, 000 words? Will I throw the computer out the window and take off on a real vacation instead? I’ll let you know next month. In the meantime, I have some storytelling to do…

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