NaNoWriMo 2022 Day #9 Spider Rider Kindle Vella Writing

When I began moodling what to write for my NaNoWriMo 2022 project, I knew it would be for a new Kindle Vella book. I had originally planned a murder mystery with a knife-throwing traveler as the hero, but the plot on that one went nowhere.

At the same time I was dreaming up possible NaNo themes, I was also struggling with Kindle Vella. Sort of. I mean I was writing and publishing, but with few readers. Not even family and friends. Part of that was the nature of the Kindle Vella platform. It’s really geared to young readers who like certain genres and episodic novels they can read on their gadgets.

 The quality of writing on Kindle Vella is all over the place too. From fake books written by ‘bots, to amateur publish-as-you-go stories, to really good offerings by New York Times bestselling authors. I started taking a hard look at was earning the coveted “crowns” in the KV rating system, in which readers participate in voting for their favorite stories.

That, too, was all over the map. But if NaNoWriMo was good for anything, it was trying something new and cranking out some serious word counts over the month of November. To that end, I decided to try some different things, starting with… a lot of things I hate reading. Ha! How’s that for stretching out the writing muscles? Do what you hate. Here is what I am focusing on  for starters:

     ·       First person POV (I don’t love reading it)

·       Head hopping from character to character in 1^st POV (just shoot me now!)

·       Horror genre with touches of dystopian and fantasy

·       YA genre (maybe leading into NA)

·       Bad punctuation and…  (Why not???)

·       Publish as I go, not waiting for a completed book. (Scariest of all!)

I figured it would be a good opportunity to try different voices and dialects/slang, as well as to really envision a different world. Do some new research. I had to have monsters, right? So spiders. Those aren’t really horror to me, but they are to a lot of other people, and hopefully new readers.

Maybe I could become a little less judgmental in the editing department. After all, I tried my first NaNoWriMo book 17 years ago to understand the writing process of my editing clients a little better.

Who knew I would fall in love with writing over the years, and November would become my favorite month? 

Anyway, next post I’ll start recapping what the evolving characters are sharing about themselves. Episode #1 is about Hank.