New Years

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Remember NaNoWriMo? As I said at the time, November is a terrible time for a novel sprint. The Christmas season, the (U.S.-based) holiday, it’s just too much.

But you know what would be a great month to start a 50K sprint? January.

No, I’m not going to try it myself (I can’t do it, I’ve never been able to sprint like that and I’m not at the point where I can push myself that far), but maybe you want to.

Which brings me to this: If you have finished a book (or will soon) you will probably want to have someone edit it for you. Well, at the end of 2011, my editor left Random House and hung out her own shingle. Betsy Mitchell was editor-in-chief at Random House, she founded Warner Aspect, she started Del Rey Manga, and she’s edited writers from Michael Chabon to Terry Brooks. She’s also a big reason why the Twenty Palaces books worked as well as they did.

Anyway, I put a permanent link in my sidebar a while ago pointing to her site, but I wanted to write a post, too. It’s a new year, and if you want to make your book as good as it can be, you should talk to her.

Oh, Christ, how many words did I just write that weren’t all about me me me? Let’s fix that: Here’s how I plan to celebrate New Years Eve: Have a quiet dinner at home alone, watch a movie, read a little, go to bed by ten. That’s after I’ve gotten up early and done my pages for the day.

Here’s how I plan to celebrate New Years Day: Write pages, do whatever.

Resolutions for the new year: None. I think resolutions are a bad idea, because everyone treats them as something you do for a couple of weeks and then break. Keeping a resolution is like a miracle. But making a sensible change to your own life? That’s not a big deal at all.

I also don’t have a lot of plans for 2012. I hope to finish A Blessing of Monsters by the end of February, and I have a project that I’ve agreed to sign on to pending further details (and which I can’t really talk about yet). Beyond that it’s all fluid. God, I hope I sell some more books, lemme tell you.