First Week of NaNoWriMo

For the month of November, my blogs are going to be short 'n sweet.  I'm participating in National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo (http://www.nanowrimo.org) because it lets me concentrate on just writing.  This November, I'm pledging to write 50,000 words in 30 days on a new Regency mystery called 'Twilight'.

Thus far, I've written: 

15 pages on Nov 1; 10 pages on Nov 2; 7 pages on Nov 3; 5 pages on Nov 4.

Honestly, I realize it has been a downward spiral so far, but I anticipate getting back up to 10 pages per day and hanging in there.  I won my goal of 50,000 words last year with my Regency romance, Love, The Critic, and I fully intend to win this year, too.

And I'm trying to work through my disappointment at the Romantic Times review of "I Bid One American" which got a measly 3 stars (my last book 'Smuggled Rose' got the full 4 stars) but the only thing the critic could find wrong with it was that Nathaniel didn't solve the mystery until the end of the book.

Well, frankly, if that was their only problem with the book, I'm good with that.  Because generally speaking, mysteries aren't solved until the end of the book.  Well, duh.  And as a writer (not to fill this blog with self-justification) there were certain events and clues that had to occur/be found before the mystery could be solved.  This necessarily meant that I couldn't just wave a magic wand and "voila" solve the mystery.

So I feel okay about it, even if they did give it a measly 3 stars.

One other thing I would note.  I've been reading a lot of reviews lately and I've seen a distinct bias *against* humorous novels.  To a large degree, I believe this is another factor in the 3-star rating.  For some reason, unless a book is full of angst, fear, and generally over-the-top anguish, critics seem to think it "less worthy" of a good rating.  Same with movies.  Comedies almost never win awards.

But I have to tell you, writing something that is light, frothy and funny is really, really hard. In fact, I would argue that it is harder than writing all that serious anguish.

So...onward and upward!

Have a great week!