Gearing Up for NaNoWriMo

My partner BlackLion and I are collaborating on a novel for NaNoWriMo – our first! Sure, I’m a published author, but I’m feeling like such a newbie. My usual writings are non-fiction, mostly about spirituality, and fiction is a whole other animal. Yet at the same time, the work we’re planning is infused with our own flavor of spirituality, creativity, and general whimsical weirdness. It’s going to be a modern faerie tale.

We’ve been doing some brainstorming and planning, and this week we both signed up on the official NaNo page. I’m excited about getting started in less than a week!

I worked on my book promotion goal this week, too. I found some roadblocks, but I’m not letting them slow me down. First, the Amazon giveaways my friend has so much success with seems to only be available if you sign up for their “select” (read, exclusive) option. So, I decided I’d use GoodReads to do a giveaway, which I’d done with my first book. Nope. They only do them for books with hard copies, not e-books.

After a bit of frustration, I decided that these were just indicators pointing me to better options. I’m going to design and implement my own book giveaway, and promote it through my network of friends and acquaintances on social media. That will be my next task, along with continuing to promote the book through Facebook and Twitter status updates. I’m trying to be as creative, friendly, and non-salesy as possible, and so far it seems to be working well. It’s on a small scale right now, but I can see the potential.

My yoga practice is going well, as is my journal-keeping. I haven’t done as much dancing and drumming as I’d like this week, but I’m fine with that. I’m still easing back into regular blogging. My energy has been really depleted over the past couple of months, and I’m starting to take steps to rest, heal, and replenish. So overall, I’d say I’m on track.