Ta Da - NaNoWriMo

image courtesy of minegro

Is it the end or is it the beginning? I typed my 50,000th word on November 20th just hours before departing for Minneapolis. This is the quickest I've every completed a NaNoWriMo. However, I couldn't validate the results until today. So that said, I WON. Woo hoo, what a great feeling to have a third novel waiting in the wings.

That brings up the ...is it the end or is it the beginning. Even though I have the 50,000 words, the novel is far from over. Now I begin the laborious project of adding, cutting, editing and in general getting the masterpiece into well... masterpiece form. After 20 days of writing with my internal editor locked in a drawer, the resulting novel needs more work.

So, why try and write 50,000 words in the span of a month (or 20 days for me) if it is going to need to be edited and massaged into shape? Because, if I hadn't challenged myself to going all out, I would still be at the starting line thinking about writing the novel.

Where do I go from here? Good question. This novel (working title Dirty Deception) goes into mothballs for a year. Yep, I let her stew for about 12 months. She lingers around on my hard drive while I pull out the novel I wrote for NaNo last year and start the editing process. Dirty Deal (working title from last year) has been laying around relaxing and now it's time to drag her out and see what needs to be done.

Why do I let them lay around for a year? Absence makes the heart grow fonder they say. And with my NaNo projects nothing could be truer. If I were to start the editing process immediately I would probably just delete the sucker from my hard drive because after working on it non-stop for twenty days (for hours and hours each day) I am sick of it. So to prevent me from having a meltdown and to preserve my prose, it gets to rest for a year.

Now for a well-deserved Thanksgiving dinner for one and all. Remember to give thanks to all that is important to you and yours.