NaNoQuerMo

Last year I did NaNoWriMo in the throws of first trimester pregnancy symptoms. It was rough, but I made it to 50,009 words, after which I promptly stopped and surrendered to the Stitch. I still have not gone back and read what I wrote last November. I'll admit it. I'm skeerd. Preggo hormones + first time dabbling into writing fantasy, and I'm pretty sure nothing good will come from those pages.

Meanwhile, since mini-me spent the first month of her life in the NICU and I needed distraction, I've spent the last six months dusting off an old drafty thing I wrote a few years back in less than thirty days as well. I've edited, critiqued, beta'ed, edited, critiqued again, and now I'm ready to query.

Just in time for NaNoWriMo.

About a week ago, I started sifting through my "idea" file, looking for inspiration. There are a couple kernels I like, that I might be able to take somewhere, but as I started to consider characters and inciting incidents and snarky bits of dialogue, my mind kept drifting back to my query. And my synopsis. Then a friend of mine tweeted a link to an outdated blog post that I feel like I was meant to see.

Among Chuck Wendig's 24 other invaluable bits of wisdom, this really hit home:

STOP WAITING

Life rewards action, not inertia. What the fuck are you waiting for? To reap the rewards of the future, you must take action in the present. Do so now.

So this year, I'm rebelling against the NaNoWriMo tradition of frantically punching out as many words of new, non sequitur prose as I can fit in my brain in 30 days. Instead of 50,000 words, I'm shooting for 60 queries.

Watch out agents, here I come!!!

And while I wait and tally up the rejections on Query Tracker and try not to pee myself if I get any requests, I'll be around to coach and support all my lovely writer friends who are biting the bullet, some of them for the first time.

Let's Write This, people!!