I assumed that my reading for November would be minimal because of the craziness of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), but it turns out I managed to read quite a few books and there are several reasons for this.

Reading: I have found the enjoyable brilliance of short reads. Longer than a short story so you can get a bit more guts and immersion, but not a novel that will take a lot longer, especially when you are strapped for time and might have to wait a few days or weeks between picking them up again, and possibly needing to reread parts, or skim to get back into them.
November Reviews will be up soon, once I recover from a rather brutal book hangover.

Planning: Oh my … I’ve of course been told about planning your writing for years, and my usual reaction is a smile, a nod, and an immediate argument in my head that planning was just NOT for me. Turns out, I thrive whole heartedly on being able to know where the story is going before I start getting those words on to the page. In my younger writing soul, I thought it would some how squish the creativity. I now know I was completely wrong. It’s still my story, my imagination as I think through it all and work out how much crap I can put my characters through, which on a side note the answer is always ‘a bit more’ ;-p. And planning doesn’t mean your characters automatically do what you want them to, oh no. BUT overall the main points remain the same. NaNoWriMo has just finished and I’ve never done so well. My final word tally was 88001 words for the 30 days. :-D. It was amazing. I even think a large chunk of the words will be usable for my writing projects.

Day 16, when I hit the 50K word goal and the heartbeat of the entire month of November.

Let me know, are you are planner, a panster, or a plantser … are a bit of all depending on what you are writing? I’d love to know.

Be Safe
Be Brave
Be Kind