New Year's Resolutions 2011

The year is almost over, and as usual, it looks like it went by too fast and I wrote too little.
What did I do in 2010?
I took part in ScriptFrenzy in April, wrote a 100-page script, did the same later in summer, and wrote 57,000 words for National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo in November. I continued writing after that to finish the first draft of that novel, a thriller mostly set in China, at about 72,000 words. Right now, I'm in the process of editing and rewriting that story. From the summer until NaNo started, I also worked on another novel, again a thriller, this one set among people vacationing on a Mediterranean island. I haven't finished it yet, but I intend to do so later next year.
So here comes 2011.
One other big thing happened in my life over the past few months: I lost my job. Instead of complaining and/or going to look for another job right now, I'm using this great opportunity to set myself new challenges. The main challenge has become my New Year's Resolution (upper case, please): write four books in 2011.
Now that I have the time, I need to be writing. I've carved up the next year in neat 3-month blocks, one block for each book.
I already have the main ideas of what kind of books I will write:
1/January-March: a thriller with an Asian theme, set in China, Taiwan and the United States;
2/April-June: a historical novel - a new genre for me - set either in Antiquity or the Middle Ages, about historical figures little known outside of some European countries;
3/July-September: a 'guru' book, yes, the only planned book that is not a novel, not fiction, but pure - well - fact and advice;
4/October-December: still so far away I have time to come to a decision about what I want to write, but candidates are a thriller closely related to actual European politics (think The Ghost by Robert Harris which was the base for the movie The Ghost Writer by Roman Polanski), the thriller about the island which I started this year but didn't finish, or another thriller set on a ship.
Add to that a vacation in Asia in January, the British Crime Writers' Association Debut Daggers in February, ScriptFrenzy in April, a European holiday after that, and the next NaNoWriMo, and I might have a hard time living up to those resolutions.
Anyway, 2011 is now or never. If I want a career in writing, if I want to get published, now is the time, now is the year to work hard. Wish me luck!

After NaNoWriMo 2010

National Novel Writing Month 2010 is over, and I won.

That means I wrote more than 50,000 words - 57,812 words to be precise. Is it a novel, as it should be according to the rules? No, but at least it's part of it. The thriller with the working title "Tour de Force" needs 80,000 words, like any real novel. That's why I am now continuing work on the same story, and also trying to maintain the same pace of 2,000 words a day.

The main reason why I didn't participate in NaNoWriMo 2009 was that the two previous years, I suffered from a post-NaNo backlash. I wrote 72,000 and 101,000 words respectively, but then virtually nothing at all for at least one month afterward. That's why this year, I maintained a slower pace.

That tempo not only should take me through December to finish Tour de Force, but also beyond and all the way through 2011. As far as the 2,000-word-a-day habit goes, I want the whole of 2011 to be National Novel Writing Year, for my own person at least.

Today, I've been celebrating the end of NaNo by watching the movie The Next Three Days - a remake of the French movie Pour Elle which I haven't seen but would like to. I also went to the book store in the hope of buying something, but as usual I want to read online reviews first. Some of the books that caught my attention were The Gordian Knot by Bernhard Schlink, Agincourt by Bernard Cornwell, Death in Seville by David Hewson, and The Soul Collectors by Chris Mooney. After reading the Amazon reviews, I might go for the Cornwell one, definitely not Mooney, and maybe not Schlink. Hewson's novel is actually a reissue of his first novel, Semana Santa, which got criticized for being too Italian. I might want to find another Hewson novel instead.

2011 should be the year I try to write four books: among my choices for the time being are a political thriller involving France and the Netherlands, a historical novel set either in the Roman era or in the Middle Ages, another thriller which could be either Mediterranean or Asian, and what I call my 'guru book.' I'll be working out the plots as I complete Tour de Force and make my choices for the novels by the end of this month. I'll tell you when I get there. In the meantime, keep warm and keep busy.