Feast or Famine

Short Fiction - 0
Long Fiction - 10933
Poetry - 152
Total Words - 11085
Paragraphs of Notes - 4

If you’re wondering about the sudden jump in my word production, then you obviously haven’t heard of National Novel Writing Month, which started at the stroke of November 1st and runs until the end of November 30th. I’m pretty much right on track with my words (you need to write 1667 words a day to complete the challenge) but my story is beginning to flounder so that’s probably going to change.

My usual pattern with NaNo (as it’s affectionately known) is to start out strong, fall behind, fall way behind, catch up a little, fall behind again, catch up, fall behind to the point where you’d think there’s no way I can finish on time, and then have a burst of words at the end that sends me across the finish line. The fact that we’re six days in and I’m still on target is a little disconcerting.

What was also disconcerting was the conversation I had with a writer friend of mine a couple of weeks ago. During the course of our lunch she informed me she was retiring from writing. I didn’t even know that was possible.

This is a woman who’s written twenty novelettes and created her own micro-press so she had total creative control over them. She even went so far as to print them and bind them herself. They’re not available electronically, you had to buy the print version, but she found a niche market that paid her very well.

But not only is she no longer interested in writing any more, she doesn’t even want to print up the books she has to sell them. I suggested maybe she should give electronic publishing a try, but she isn’t interested in that either. It just boggles my mind.

But it also raises an interesting question. What happens to the books you’ve written when you die? I would hate the thought of them dying with me. Can you leave the copyrights to your works to someone in your will so they can continue to profit by them? Would they even want to?

Something to think about.