This is my third time doing NaNoWriMo. Both of the other times I've had moments where I was pretty sure I wouldn't get to fifty thousand words by the 30th, but both times I pulled it off by the 28th. This year, however, I was almost certain. I am very pleased and surprised to tell you that this year I'm okay with not winning NaNoWriMo. Let me share with you my reasons.
- I did finish my NaNoWriMo novel, or should I say novella.
- I have three other completed novels that are still in their first drafts
As I was writing my NaNo novel this year it seemed that my story wasn't going to end up being fifty thousand words long. This has not been the case before. My last couple novels had thirty thousand some words to be written after I reached the 50K mark by November 30th. This time around I was at the midpoint of my novel and not even at 15K words yet. It ended up being a complete story at 24K words. I'm really excited to have a finished novella though, it seems to be a new length of choice for eBooks. A lot of people read on their phones, and having something shorter like that is becoming more desirable. I worked a lot on how to make the story work too, and even though my outline was sometimes just ahead of what I was writing, I once stopped for a couple days to nail down how I would get through Act II into the climax and I think it worked well. This little novella might be the first long form fiction I've ever written where I don't feel I need to go back and change a whole lot after finishing it. I'll get some beta readers on it and see if I'm way off base, but I don't think I'll have to do a ton of story revision like I am with my first three novels.
Another reason I am a bit relieved that I can move on from NaNoWriMo this year is that I'm almost halfway through revising my second NaNo novel, and once it's cleaned up it will be the first full novel I will podcast and self publish. I've been waiting a long time for this and if you look a couple blog posts down you'll see that I even have some spectacular cover art for it! I can't wait to get this novel in front of beta readers, and on podiobooks.com, Amazon, and the other online eBook retailers.
So yes I am a bit blue about not winning NaNoWriMo this year, but it's okay. I've got three other novels to get ready for publishing! It's time for a season of revising and rewriting!
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