It will probably come as no surprise to anyone who has been following my ramblings of late, that once again I have taken the Douglas Adams approach to CampNaNo’s deadline, and decided just to sit back and enjoy it wooshing by.
No, I have not finished Bootlesquith Manor. No, I have not reached my arbitrary target of 20,000 edited words during the month. Yes, I do still intend to have this thing ready by the end of summer. Yes, I am probably kidding myself.
In all seriousness though, some good has come of all this. I’ve got the first few chapters pretty roundly edited. I’m sure there will be at least one more round of edits as I get deeper into the story and find stuff I should have been foreshadowing and whatnot, but that can wait.
I’ve reached around 10,000 edited words; by a rough chapter count that should put the finished article at about 60k – quite a bit longer than I had anticipated, but no real surprise considering it started out as a NaNoWriMo project anyway. Although, the whole section where the protagonist turns out to be his own grandfather, while mildly amusing, doesn’t fit in with anything else and is going to be among the next darlings I humanely put out of their misery.
I’ve also got a vague marketing plan for this and The Ambivalence Chronicles – although, with Bit#1 queueing up for editing time behind Bootlesquith Manor, there is clearly more to be done before that becomes relevant. The plan, big as it is, is to have Bootlesquith and Bit#1 hitting the kindles before NaNo. Well, you have to have these lofty goals, right?
Oh, and a whole different potential book/series idea hit me just last night; one which may take less time to put out on kindle, but which can’t really be prioritised yet.
So that’s how Camp NaNo turned out for me… for now, it’s back to finishing Bootlesquith Manor – snippets will continue to be posted occasionally on twitter and my facebook page; and of course don’t forget to hit the sign-up page if you want release news for Bootlesquith Manor, The Ambivalence Chronicles and whatever other crazy ideas I come up with as it happens.