Daily Archives: November 5, 2022

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Let’s Get Ready To NANO by Tracy Reed

November 5, 2022 by Tracy Reed in category Pink Pad by Tracy Reed tagged as NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, Tracy Reed, writing

Welcome to November. Or more commonly known to writers as NANO month. I’m doing NANO for the fourth year in a row. Actually, I think it might be the fifth, because I didn’t keep track via the website one year. Doing NANO probably wasn’t a wise move for me this year, considering everything I have going on. In my defense, my schedule wasn’t supposed to be so packed at this time of the year, but a couple of family medical issues popped up and pushed me a little behind.

So what’s on my plate for this month? Two anthology contributions…my first holiday novella (18k+ words), a short story (10k+ words), my first attempt at a romantic comedy and a very large book (100k+ words). Out of all the projects, I think the book was the easiest project. The romantic comedy was the most difficult and also the first project due…November 6th.

I felt doing NANO this year was the best way to assure I’d write the next book in the Alex series. I had another project in mind, but this book kept calling out to me.

I am a proud panther, but for this book I made some notes, because there were a few points and new characters I wanted to include.

When I decided to use the fifth book in the Alex series for NANO I was banking on using some of the unused chapters from the other books in the series. As of this writing, it’s NANO Day three and so far, I’ve only used a couple hundred orphaned words.

Another first for me is a writing schedule. I sort of just wing it. However, I didn’t realize the books in this series were so big. Books two and three are 90k+ words each and book four is over 100k+ words. In order to keep in line with the series, part of my NANO plan is to write six days a week at 3500 words. I set such a high word count schedule because I really want to complete the book by the end of the month. The last time I set a similar plan, I ended up completing the book a month later.

I like writing during NANO and I’m sure I’ll do better this year. However, I won’t be surprised if I finish the month with an incomplete book. I won’t be discouraged, but getting half way on a 100k word book isn’t too bad.

Last month, an amazing thing happened. I got my fourth BookBub Featured Ad. It happened so quickly, my head started spinning. I applied for a featured deal at nine-thirty in the morning and three hours later, I got an approval email. I was so shocked. After I stopped doing a happy dance and praising God, I went to work on a plan.

The other times I had BookBubs, I ran additional newsletter ads. I didn’t have that opportunity this time. However, I did run a regular BookBub ad for book two in the Alex series. I figured it would be a good lead in for the upcoming Alex Four release. I’d had a featured deal for book two in the series with very good downloads. This time, I didn’t get the downloads I got the first time I had a featured deal. However, I hit the top 100 Free Books in the Amazon store and Apple. Plus, the book stayed in the number one spot in one of its categories while it was free. I was shouting louder this time than when I got the featured deal.
Besides the high ranking, I also earned some preorders on book four, additional BookBub followers and sell-through on my backlist. Overall, it was a surprise with significant benefits.

Happy NANO month.