NaNoWriMo Week 1 In Review

I have completed week one of NaNoWriMo on schedule.  It helps that I outlined the sequel to Chaos Wolf, tentatively titled Chaos Hunt.  I’m on schedule with word count slightly over the average of 1667.  I was hoping to be able to pull ahead with the upcoming holidays, but so far that hasn’t happened.

I declared Chaos Wolf finished earlier.  Turns out I jumped the gun.  One of my beta readers pointed out that I like to use a compound sentence construction a lot.  So I’ve gone back through and rewritten bits and pieces and pared the word count down further.  I’m almost afraid to say that it will be done a second time.  But after this clean up, I am going to let it sit for a few weeks and start research into the next phase.

And what is the next?  Research.  Lots of research.  I have been thinking long and hard about if I am going to attempt to submit or go straight into self-publishing.  I have decided that I am going to attempt to find an agent and submit to several slush piles.  If after two years it does not get picked up, I will look into self-publishing it.

I’ve talked with people on both sides of the traditional versus self-publishing debate.  I’ve read articles both for traditional publishing and for self-publishing.  I am educating myself on my options as they change, given that what Amazon does today can completely alter the self-publishing landscape tomorrow. So I am going to be reassessing as I go.  The advantage of this is that I have time to work on the sequel and a few ideas I have for other books.  So if this one doesn’t sell, maybe the next one will.