Sleepless nights as a writer

NaNoWriMo is causing me to lose sleep already, and it’s only the beginning of October.  This is one of the reasons I’ve been reluctant to join in on the annual write-a-thon of writing 50,000 words in 30 days every November with thousands of other writers from around the world.  I have a little bit of an … addictive… personality.  That served me well when I was launching Outskirts Press in 2002 because I thought nothing of working 20 hours a day; and in the ensuing decade,12-18 hours a day helping writers successfully self-publish their books.

And now that I’ve committed to writing a book in a month, my mind is constantly abuzz with plot details, character details, even specific lines that specific characters will say at specific moments in the book.  I hope I remain this fanatical throughout November, but that seems like a long way away.

So I log-in to the NaNoWriMo site to attempt to create more of my profile, and see that I still cannot earn any more “badges” (more about that in a future post).

At least they’ve updated last week’s message to something new, which, in essence, says they’re experiencing technical difficulties.    If I remember correctly, they experience “technical difficulties” every year in October.  Perhaps that is the reason no one has gotten back to us at Outskirts Press about sponsorship.  Every year, Outskirts Press donates a percentage of our gross annual revenue to organizations. In the past these organizations have included The Children’s Hospital, the Make a Wish Foundation, the Education & Literacy Foundation, Colorado Humanities, and yes, even National Novel Writing Month. Rob in our Corporate Marketing dept. has been trying to contact them for a week or two now about giving them money this year and has received no response.  When you can’t even GIVE money to a company, you know they’re having difficulties, technical or otherwise…