I Finished NaNoWriMo – Now What?

I met this year’s NaNoWriMo challenge with an open throttle and pedal to the floor hitting 50,000 words on Friday, November 15th. But I didn’t celebrate. I wasn’t excited at all. I still had to finish it. I was super close and had several choices, but worried about the ending. Remember, worry and doubt is death to creativity. I wrote a few thousand words late Saturday afternoon and felt somewhat better. Then I sat down Sunday and tapped out the rest. It all came together, thank God.

Will you finish soon too? Yay! So, now what?

First of all, celebrate! I’m bad at that. Instead, I did this –

Why not write a book every month?

It occurred to me that if I can write this fast, I should write a book every month or every two months, anyway. I could write at least six in 2020! A lofty goal, indeed. (Who says indeed anymore?)

The satisfaction in writing a draft of a novel is a great incentive for me. Like most writers, I had a few ideas to choose from. That’s the easy part. This year, I picked one from my hat. I knew right away that I wanted to write the other idea. Ha!

I hope to write another book soon. But first…

Take a well-deserved break.

Yes, I’m taking a break. I’m catching up with blogging and The Wild Side Podcast while continuing to polish another book. We have one more family birthday to celebrate. Happy Birthday, Danny! The holidays will arrive next week with Thanksgiving. Then the wild rumpus will truly begin.

Continue to Wake Up Early

Like I mentioned before I started NaNoWriMo, I had been waking up early upon returning to the States from Europe. That head start continues to help me to check more tasks off my list. The longer morning stretches out the day. I always need more time, don’t you?

Let the manuscript rest

This is the best part! I’ll let my new book rest until after the holidays. Then, I’ll poke it a few times to wake it up from hibernation and will print it out so I’m not tempted to rewrite it on my laptop. That really slows me down. I’ll take a red pen and mark up the pages. Since it took two weeks to write it, then editing should only take a couple of days, right? Pshhh. It always takes longer. I’m sure every page will be decorated with bursts of color.

Note to self: make sure my handwriting is legible.

But, don’t get frustrated and do this…

I will polish it up through a couple of rewrites. Then I will pass it along to my critique group and beta readers. There will be at least one more revision after that. It’s all a process but worth it.

Reflect on what you learned

Writing 50,000 words is a ton of work and a huge time commitment. Personally, I learned that I’m super competitive. Not with others at all. With myself. The first year I joined NaNoWriMo, one of my buddies cranked out a draft way over 100,000 words. There are prolific writers I will never beat. Nope. Seeing the bar graph helped spur me onward. After a few days, reaching the three thousand word daily total became a thing.

It wasn’t as hard as I thought. I managed to live my life outside the writing cave and hiked, played tennis, and even skied with family and friends.

The book I sat down to write on November 1st takes place in Maine, but it twisted and turned and became something completely different than what I intended; something a lot more complicated. Once again, pantsing as apposed to plotting and writing from an outline totally worked for me. The story still creeps into my subconscious. Suddenly, I’m back in Maine.

Will you consider participating in NaNoWriMo next year? Have you been to Maine? Have you ever been inspired by traveling?

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