NaNoWriNOPE: A Month Without Words

I didn't write a word in November.  Sacrilege!

It wasn't writer's block.  This was a conscious decision.  Many writers celebrate (celebrate?) November by participating in National Novel-Writing Month--NaNoWriMo--where the object is to start a new novel on the first of the month and finish it (or, at least 50,000 words worth) by the end of the month.

Yeah... I didn't do that.  In fact I've NEVER done it--at least, not in November. November is the month that never works for me.  As you probably know, writing is my full-time career.  I don't set off to an evil day job in the morning and come home to this world at night.  I don't even work part-time.  Writing is all she wrote... which goes a long way to explaining my wretched poverty.

I used to work in business.  That was years ago, but I've maintained good relationships with those people. In November, they haunt me like ghosts with fists full of dollars.  November is the month when teams in business realize if they don't spend their allocated funds, their budgets will be cut back the following year.  So they scramble to spend, spend, spend.  And that ends up involving me. 

November is pretty much the only month when I'm not eating oatmeal three meals a day.

Usually, I'll make at least a slight effort to get some writing done while I've got my freelance work going on.  This year, I decided to make a change.  Remember this summer when my publisher loveyoudivine Alterotica went out of business?  Well, that left me sitting on a whole lot of previously published work--we're talking dozens of short stories, two anthologies, and my trans lesbian Christmas romance, The Red Satin Collection.

I made a deal with myself this November: I wouldn't write a single word.  Instead, I'd take on as much freelance work as I could handle and spend my spare time (haha) revising, proofing, formatting, and self-publishing my out-of-print works.

I can't remember the last time I went a month without writing.  I thought it would destroy me, but in fact I got an incredible amount of work done.  There's no sense sitting on dozens of ebooks which could potentially be available for sale and bringing in money.  I self-published The Red Satin Collection and My Mistress' Thighs in their second editions--ebook and print--as well as so many transgender and genderqueer shorts I've lost count.

Now, in December, I'm slowly getting back into the habit of writing, but I'm still devoting a portion of my day to getting my previously-published anthology "Kinksters" back in print, as well as publishing the individual stories in a series called "Certified SMUT."

To be honest, my time away from writing kind of took some of the pressure off. There's a huge difference between the creative end of building a story and the business end of selling it.

Now I'll have to strive for balance.  Writing or selling: which is harder?  Now that's a question I don't think I can answer.

Giselle