Post NaNo and back to work!

I ended up with two great novels. (Okay, maybe I'm biased.) The Servant Girl is going to need more work than Dancer, but I'm very happy with what I got, especially considering all the side things in life that have been going on. Servant Girl had 102,000 words and Dancer about 98,000 -- so I managed 200,000 words. It was hard work, but I'm glad I did it.

This was, in fact, the hardest NaNo I've ever done. But that's what NaNo is about, isn't it? Pushing yourself to do something that isn't easy for you? Every year I could do 50,0000 words and claim victory, but it wouldn't be helping me grow as a writer. NaNo does that, if only because it allows me to push beyond my current comfort level. I also try to write something a little outside my usual boundaries each year. The Servant Girl was it for this year -- a non-magical fantasy. I'm still not sure I liked the way it turned out, but I'll let it sit for a while and see.

Dancer was a different sort of work, and I think I finally got something there that I like, after three completely new versions of the novel.

Now, I'm back to other work, though. Today, I finished the final edits of Paid in Gold and Blood today, a book that I've been working on for about four years. It will be heading to DAW, I think, early next week. That was a huge amount of work as well, but I'm happy with the end result.

I am also working on a database of information from my stories since some of the stories use the same locations and sometimes minor characters can turn up in various places. I'm using Access since I'm familiar with it and I can get what I want easily there. I can add material into it as I work on different stories, and it should be fun.

Yes, I have odd ideas of fun. Like no one here noticed.

But NaNo is done, and this blog will soon go back to regular snippets and odd writing things for the next few months.