The Beauty of NaNoWriMo Lives On

The benefits of NaNo are immense.  I've blogged about some of them before, but NaNo still beats in my veins.  It lives on.

We all have our speeds.  We all have our strengths and weaknesses.  As a novelist, NaNo is perfect for me.  The ticking-time-bomb-in-the-bus momentum of the short-term goal (thirty days) keeps me striving for those 2K words daily.  I hit my 50K mark early even with a job, a twenty-four bug confining me to bed for twenty hours and one earlier day of complete downtime, which was signaled as necessary by my low WC from the previous day. 

The month-long focus on the WC keeps us honed in on the grand goal.  Like a horse wearing blinders, we keep our eyes on the prize.  I am guilty of multitasking, but the one-goal/one-focus has the benefits of COMPLETION.  There is no procrastination involved.  How cool is that?

Plus I had the wonderful side benefit of a writing buddy, an ex-coworker, who shared his NaNo project with me and I found him to be a genius storyteller.  Which didn't surprise me as he is articulate whether speaking in person or via email.  He has a sly humor that shows up as you listen to him or read his words.  His work, his first draft mind you, is amazingly clean and resonates with intelligence and wit.  Plus, he has the innate ability to juggle many characters within a short novel (just over 50,000 WC) and give them distinct personalities.  Even with three characters whose names all started with N, I could easily keep them separated.

If I thought I could keep myself objective, "above the story," I'd go back to dissect and study his work-in-progress just to see how he so efficiently accomplished the 3-D embodiments of his people in his story land.  Or I could just read it again for the sheer fun of it.

He also had used rhetorical devices, like foreshadowing, similes, metaphors.  There were no plotting problems--no "that doesn't make sense" red flags within his draft.  His FIRST draft.  

The world will no doubt find a wonderful fantasy novelist within his debut novel.  Whether he goes traditionally published or Indie, I cannot wait to read his finished book. I would not dare to share his name without his permission and I surely do not want to pressure this budding author.  Plus he needs to decide whether to go with a pen name or not.

Do not despair.  Upon publication, I will definitely give a grand shout out. 

I feel a little smug in that it was me who mentioned NaNoWriMo to him--like a talent scout who hit gold in finding the next Michael Jordan, or Elvis Presley, or Elle McPherson.  Hopefully he treasures his writing ability as much as I do and we'll all be sharing the gift of his tales in the near future.

So don't withhold your compliments.  If they exist inside you, they should be shared.  One simple encouragement could change someone's life.  Even your own.  After all, what goes around comes around.  Keep verbalizing those good inspirations.  We need to hear them.

Target Audience / Reader Demographic

As a follow-up to my previous post regarding how my age does not determine what I read, I would like to further discuss the anomalies of “target audience” and “reader demographic.”  I happen to enjoy teen paranormal books/movies, and I am neither teen nor paranormal (much).  Yet if my age and human status are limiting factors, then booksellers would never realize they have a market in fifty-something females of the non-vampire, non-werewolf variety.

Anyway, I don’t believe the old writer’s adage to “write to your audience” as if only people of the same approximate age of my main characters will read that book.  My personal reading habits alone defy that model.  It is too much like "write what you know."  Which sounds logical, until you apply it to the fantasy writers out there, or the SciFi genre or the paranormal crowd.

I recently read in the Kindle Direct Publishing newsletter about the top twenty most well-read cities in America.  It’s an interesting collection of not only cities, but what was the bestselling genre sold for some of them (nonfiction, cooking, children’s books, etc.).  Now this is information an author can use.

To begin with, you could choose a city you know and love from that list of topmost-book-reading devotees and make that place a central theme to your next book, a character of its own.  Think of Tara Plantation in Gone with the Wind.  Or for a more timely example, Lisa Turner’s Memphis in A Little Death in Dixie.

Follow your genre and market heavily (local newspaper articles, TV station spots, radio ads, billboards) in those cities which devour your kind of books.  Amazon’s Author Center states “Nielsen BookScan does not aggregate sales data for Kindle or ebooks, or for books available only through third party sellers.”  HOWEVER, Amazon compiled these figures and included Kindle e-book sales.

I predict Nielsen BookScan and the like will incorporate e-books sales.  Just like Bestseller Lists will incorporate e-books.  And contests will allow e-book submissions.  All that will have to change to accommodate the jinormous elephant in the room.  Because e-books are big sellers.  

In the meantime, write what moves you.