Today marks the end of the month. Celebrating took a little longer than planned, so even though I made it to 50,000 words early, I almost didn’t actually finish the book on time. But earlier today I wrote the last several chapters and brought the book to a close. My final word count was 56,192 words.
So while I can celebrate my accomplishments, I am left wondering what to do next. The last few chapters of the book were hard to finish because I have ideas for things that need to be changed to make the story better overall; in short, I’m already considering rewriting this novel (which is still untitled). To do so, I think I will need to do some significant world building and plotting to clean everything up and get to what really matters in the story. Part of me wants to get to that immediately, but I’ve heard from various books and other sources that you should set it aside for a little while before going back to it. So right now I’m not sure what my next step will be.
But I will worry about that in a few days. For now, it’s time to celebrate the accomplishment of writing over 50,000 words AND finishing the novel all in one month. And that was without a plan! So congratulations to everyone else who finished NaNoWriMo this year. Congratulations also to those who even made the attempt – successful or not, we’re all winners!
An Acquaintance with Letters 