Tuesday 28 October 2014

NaNoWriMo




I'd heard of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) before but have never actually participated. Usually my freelance commitments mean that cracking a whole novel out in one month isn't all that achievable.

The aim of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words of your WIP in just one month. Personally, I work quite well under pressure because I enjoy making myself suffer. Since I work from home it is important to always motivate myself and I guess I see NaNoWriMo as I way of doing that. So this year I'm tossing my hat in the ring (is that even the right saying??) and I'm giving it a go.

Everything is all planned out including my story and daily word counts to hit. I'm going to be working on a YA sci-fi adventure which I've had lurking around in the nether regions of my mind for almost three years now so its high time the story, The Other You, gets to see the light of day and have some life breathed in to it.

Will I make the 50,000 target by the end of November? It depends on a lot of things really, most of all myself. I'm going to be writing a story I'm crazy excited about which will help. I also plan on bribing myself to hit daily targets with my favorite sweet treats; jelly babies (Bassetts of course). The only bump in the road might come from my freelance commitments. I'm currently writing the second part of a 60K trilogy and a 25K sweet romance novella. Since I'm contractually obligated to complete those, they sadly might take priority over my own WIP if I start to struggle.

But I'm full of naive optimism having never done NaNoWriMo before that I will hit 50K, and failing that I'll have made a decent dent in a story I've been dying to write for years!

So wish me luck! After I've eaten my weight in sweets on Halloween I'll be settling down for the next four weeks to write as much as I possibly can!

If you want to follow my progress I'll be doing updates on Twitter; @tiny_dancer85 and also via my Facebook page; https://www.facebook.com/CarysJonesWriter

http://nanowrimo.org/participants/carysj/novels/the-other-you

If anyone else is signing up for NaNoWriMo give me a shout and we can motivate each other! But no, I'm not willing to share my jelly babies before you even ask...

xoxo

Tuesday 7 October 2014

Dare to Dream

What would you do if you thought the world was going to end? Like, literally? Would you try and save it? But you're only 14, stuck in a British comprehensive school and living with five siblings who daily push you to the brink of despair. These are the issues facing Maggie Trafford in my upcoming book, Dare to Dream.

I've mentioned before that I've been signed up with indie publishers Reuts. I'm really excited to be working with them and I'm currently in the midst of edits with my lovely editor Eleanor. We are hopeful that Dare to Dream will be ready to be released in to the world early next year although we won't have an exact release date until all the edits are wrapped up. And then comes the exciting part of cover reveals and release day giveaways!

I'm thrilled to have a YA book coming out soon! It is definitely the genre I most love to read! Maggie's story is also pretty personal to me as the book is set all around my home county of Shropshire. I hope everyone is as excited to read her story as I am to share it. I think we've all been there at fourteen feeling like the weight of the world is on our shoulders. Maggie truly believes that the world will soon end thanks to an onslaught of nightmares from which she can't escape. But the world can't really end, can it?

To find out, make sure you add Dare to Dream to your TBR list and keep an eye out for details around the release date!

 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23337621-dare-to-dream?from_search=true