Grand Rapids Comic Con and a TV interview

November is always a busy month for me. I'm in the midst of my 14th year of participating in National Novel Writing Month. Yes, I am working on two projects, one new, one continuing, so rebelling a bit, but even with taking three days mostly off of writing for the comic con, I'm still on track, if not a smidge ahead.

Last month, I traveled over toward Detroit to do an interview on Indie Reads TV with Pages and Promotions that aired on CMNTV. If you're interested in checking it out - I always find it interesting to see how people talk and act in person compared to what I'd imagined online - its now available on YouTube.

Grand Rapids Comic Con was a lot of fun and a success for meeting readers and selling books. I shared a booth with a few other authors, because while we're all swimming in cash from the huge successes of our writing careers (that's sarcasm, in case that wasn't clear), we like to pool resources.  My booth included Judith Wade, G.S. Scott and Remearis Brown. It was a long three days of peopling, but we all survived. And because I'd built up a good word count buffer, I didn't fall behind on my NaNo endeavor.

Wearing my festive hat. That was all fun and good but I kept reaching up thinking they were my reading glasses,
which I often wear on my head. Surprise, the hat didn't help me see better.

While I do have four, maybe five more events coming up this year, I'm sticking close to home. Why? Well, for those of you not familiar with the fickle Michigan weather, to give you an example: Fall lasted five days. That was early last week. It was nice. So pretty with changing leaves gently falling from the trees. Then Winter arrived with freezing temperatures and snow flurries. Yesterday we got a foot of snow. Schools were closed. Roads didn't get plowed until late afternoon. Everything was a mess. 85% of us didn't get out during those five lovely days to rake the leaves. Most of the leaves were still on the trees! Now, they're in giant clumps on top of the snow and that will make a fine wet mess if we get a melt before we get hit again.

So yes, if you're looking for me, I'll mostly be in Holland with a trip to Kalamazoo and possibly Muskegon.

Hope your November is going well, and if you're participating in NaNoWriMo, get off the internet and go write your novel!

November. Already? Nano and IWSG

OMG, where has this year gone? I blink and another month has passed. As much as I intend to post more often, that just hasn't happened. So to sum up October, since I last posted...

I finally finished rewriting a short sci-fi story (short as in 12K) that I've been dragging my feet through for a couple years. It's been part of my 'getting stuff done before NaNo endeavor'. I'm feeling pretty good about it and after one more read through to finish cleaning it up, I'll send it off to a couple beta readers. If you're interested in joining in the beta reading fun, drop a comment below with your email address.

Beyond that, I got another short story tweaked and sent back into submissions. According to The Submission Grinder, I fell off the submission train in May. Oops.

In the not writing but writing related category, I did a major cleaning of my writing room, clearing away a lot of notes, sewing projects, and putting up my last NaNo poster (my walls are full, not that I'm done doing NaNo). With all those distractions gone, I may be more inclined to be productive with writing.

I had a great time meeting readers at various events during October and my November schedule is even more full. If you're looking for something to read, I'll be at the pile of events listed on the right between now and Christmas.

And onward into November! I'll be doing year 14 of NaNoWriMo. My intention is to try a middle- grade fantasy novel. We'll see how it goes. I have a raft of backup projects if my motivation veers elsewhere. I've managed 50,000 words or more for 12 of those years so we'll see how this one goes.

If you're not familiar with 

the Insecure Writers Support 

Group, check it out here 
and find links to all the other 
participating writers.

As to this month's Insecure Writer's Support Group question: What's the strangest thing you've ever Googled when researching a story,
I have to give that some thought.

I guess I've googled so many odd things that no particular one of them stands out to me. Lots of medical stuff, along with how long can a person live in various states of injury or circumstance, science stuff about planets and space travel, goodness, the list goes on. All hail Google.

In the spirit of NaNo upon us, I'm going to switch gears to researching in general. Don't let it bog you down in a first draft. Leave notes in your draft as you go so you can easily find the spots that need your research later. If it's a quick question, do a quick search, but don't let tricky internet suck you down the rabbit hole. Keep writing! Names, places, details, dates, it can all be cleaned up later. The important thing is to get the story down from beginning to end (or in whatever order works for you). Once that major accomplishment is done, then spend the time to research those pesky details and polish up the bits around them.

Good luck to all my fellow NaNo participants. If you're looking for buddies, friend me: Gypsywitch.