NaNoWriMo Final Update

Well I ended up finishing the book very soon after the last update! I didn’t make 50,000 words; the book ended up being only around 41,000. But that’s fine, the 50K was their thing not mine. As I told a friend, I was using their thing to motivate me to do my thing; reaching 50K was never the goal, finishing the book was. I would like to make the book longer though; I’ve already been thinking about more plot I can add to it. And of course my description was extremely sparse (I’m not big on description anyway, and when you’re writing for NaNoWriMo it tends to get done even less).

The plan right now is to give it a little time (I’m going to have some time over Xmas, maybe then) and then read it through and see what I think (yikes!). See where it can use more description (everywhere), find parts that can be expanded (I’ve already got a new subplot or two in mind), and just do some general editing. Then it will be time for a rewrite…Most of what I’ve read about writing is focused on getting that first draft done; I don’t know much about rewrites. So the first thing will be some reading/research on rewriting. Which I’m looking forward to! Learning more about that part of the process should be fun, challenging, and interesting.

Then sometime next year I will do a second draft. I’m actually pretty eager to begin 🙂

I’m very glad I did NaNoWriMo. It was just the burst I needed to get the book moving. I think it would be fun to do it again next year, maybe with no outline out all (scary!).

So technically I didn’t “win” NaNo, but as far as I’m concerned I totally won; I got my book finished! Or at least the first draft…thanks for reading my updates and for the support!