Post NaNoWriMo 2017 Thoughts

After my bold statement last month on how I was going to participate in NaNoWriMo, you must have been wandering, where have I gone this whole month?

(Or maybe you haven’t, but let’s assume that you have.)

I am going to answer that question by letting you know where I am right now, as I believe it describes what had been happening in November for me:

Yes, I am currently sipping my daily dose of coffee in a neighbourhood cafe. In fact, I have been doing the same thing for almost 30 days straight of November.

Of course I haven’t been occupying the same seat in the same cafe all month. Some days, my only choice was to brew myself a cup of instant coffee in the office and have to be happy with that while I munched on a snack bar. But the general idea is this: while I can’t say I’ve been working on my NaNo novel all the time, November had been a very productive month for me.

Yes, you did not read that wrong.

NaNoWriMo 2017 for me was disastrous.

I have prepared everything that I could prepare; I assembled a complete outline, I bought some snacks as my fuel for the month, and I even reserved some time slots in my busy schedule for writing every day. I cancelled plans with my friends, and I also told my family that I would be super anti-social for the month of November, just so they won’t freak out if I don’t enjoy a family dinner or two.

But despite all my preparations, my NaNoWriMo was pretty disastrous.

Why, you might ask?

Because of an emergency in my day job, that’s why.

Now, I can’t tell you the details of that emergency, unfortunately. But let’s say that something happened that required most of my attention. Something really bad, I must add.

And this something bad actually prevented me from going home on time for most of November. I couldn’t even count the number of days I have to wake up at 5AM, work on that emergency until 11PM with almost no break time, and then get home at around 1AM in the morning. For every spare time that I had in my commuting time, I barely had any energy to write my NaNo novel, let alone to stay awake.

And deciding to shift my genre to mystery didn’t help either.

I didn’t have enough time (or energy, for that matter), to actually explore the genre much. My current writing style is unfortunately ill-suited for the genre, and when I tried to write the project with my current style, it simply didn’t work out well.

I feel bad that it sounds like I’m giving out a lot of excuses for not doing the one thing that I should have been doing, but there you have it.

Did I finish my project? Nope. Did I manage to find a new writing style to suit my mystery novel project? Nope. Did I have fun throughout the month? Nope.

I have to admit that my NaNoWriMo 2017 was a complete failure. And no matter how I hope I could justify myself by giving out all the reasons why it didn’t work out, I might as well say that I couldn’t do it just because I wasn’t trying enough.

I mean if I really want to finish the book, I could always quit my job and finish it in my spare time while looking for a new job. But that’s mental.

But November was not all bad news for me, either.

While I was certainly busy working for my day job, I was also busy for a… greater means. And that “means” has something to do with the image below:

If you have been following me on Instagram and Twitter, you might have seen me circulating some polls to decide on the cover for my upcoming book: Unspoken Words. I posted four different alternatives for the covers, and the above image actually won the poll.

Yes, after over two years of not publishing anything, I finally finished another book! How exciting is that?

I have been working with my editor to launch this book for quite some time. And I am proud to announce that if we do not encounter any problems, we should expect the book hitting the shelves towards the end of 2017 / the beginning of 2018. Woo-hoo!

And yes, the completion of this second book of mine is also heavily-reliant on the daily dose of caffeine I’m taking. I’m just glad that even though my NaNoWriMo was a complete failure, I managed to fix the emergency at my day job and, above everything, get this book “Unspoken Words” ready for launch soon.

If you’re interested in my upcoming second publication, “UNSPOKEN WORDS”, feel free to follow this blog or any of my social media, because I will be posting a lot of teaser and information about it pretty soon!

Every cloud has a silver lining

Even though NaNoWriMo 2017 didn’t work out for me, at least my second book is just around the corner for launch.

For now, I’ll enjoy the holiday mood of December by playing my copy of Pokemon Ultra Moon, and slowly try to get back to that mystery novel I originally planned for NaNoWriMo 2017.

See you around, guys!

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