This post has been reblogged from my website, but I thought it was incredibly fitting given the month we’re in 🙂
If you’d have said to me two years ago—maybe even just a
year ago—that I would “win” NaNoWriMo, I’d have laughed at you. For those of
you that don’t know, NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, is a yearly
challenge which takes place in November. Writers sign up via the website and
challenge themselves to write 50,000 words in a month—in order words, a novel.
Or at least a good chunk of one. Sadly, I haven’t been able to take part this year.
I’m not a fast writer, but then nor am I a slow one. I sit
comfortably somewhere in the middle. But for some reason, last year I decided I
was going to give NaNoWriMo a go. I’d already done a ton of research for the
novel I intended to work on next, all I needed to do was getting the planning
done and I’d be ready to go. And so, having worked out that I’d have to write
2,500 per day for twenty days (I don’t work weekends, so I had to remove
weekend days from the equation), I figured it was still achievable.
Come the 1st of November I was signed up, had
everything planned out and once I opened that Word document, I quickly started
to fill it with words. I’m a bit of a word count watcher when I write, anyway,
so the only difference was, rather than simply updating the widget in my
website’s sidebar, I would also update on the NaNoWriMo website. I started off
really well, and was achieving my target each day. Of course, I dropped behind
my “buddies” at weekends, but soon caught up again on weekdays.
I have to admit, it was addictive. Granted, I’d already done
an awful lot of hard work before opening
that Word document, but it didn’t mean the writing was easy, especially as it
was the most complex piece of work I’d written to date. But somehow, come the
29th November (the 30th was a Saturday, and so the 29th
was my finish date), I did it. I hopped over that 50,000 word mark, copied and
pasted the text into the NaNoWriMo site to get it validated, and received my
winner’s certificate and badge. It was a fantastic feeling—I’d done it!
However, the novel was far from finished. The challenge had
really broken the back of it, but I knew I still had a long way to go. I didn’t
stop writing, but I admit from the 50k mark until the end was a lot slower
going because I didn’t have that urgency pushing me to write faster. Not to
mention during November, I’d rejigged my days to make writing my priority.
Finally, in the New Year of 2014, I finished the book. It
was almost twice the length it had been at the end of November—95,000 words. So
personally, I still think I did pretty damn well to write it in that period of
time, and I’m delighted to see it out there for people to read and hopefully
enjoy.
The book has been incredibly well received so far, with lots
of four and five star reviews—so if you’re a paranormal romance fan, I hope
you’ll check out Pack of Lies.
*****
Author Bio:
Lucy Felthouse is a very busy woman! She writes erotica and
erotic romance in a variety of subgenres and pairings, and has over 100
publications to her name, with many more in the pipeline. These include several
editions of Best Bondage Erotica, Best Women’s Erotica 2013 and Best Erotic
Romance 2014. Another string to her bow is editing, and she has edited and
co-edited a number of anthologies, and also edits for a small publishing house.
She owns Erotica For All, is book
editor for Cliterati, and is one eighth
of The Brit Babes. Find out more
at http://www.lucyfelthouse.co.uk.
Join her on Facebook
and Twitter, and subscribe to her
newsletter at: http://eepurl.com/gMQb9
Hi, Lucy,
I remember a year or so ago (or maybe it was longer), you blogged about writing novellas instead of short stories. And now you've written a 95K novel. Impressive development!