National Novel Writing Month - the Aftermath

First off, the official announcement. *clears throat*

I am an NaNoWriMo Winner!

That's right, people. I killed it. 50K words in 29 days (yep, uh huh, I finished on Sunday.) It took that bull by the horns and made it my bitch. I stared into the darkness and saw the horror. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror... Horror has a face... And that face is NaNoWriMo. TAKE THAT 50K WORDS! WHO'S YOUR DADDY? WHO'S YOUR, er, MOMMY?

Um, sorry. I might have gotten a little tiny bit carried away. *grins*

Okay, that's out of the way. Now for my reflections on "Thirty days and nights of literary abandon!"



THIS is what you are to do to me if I ever mention doing NaNo again, mkay? You start out this thing and you think "1667 words per day? I can totally do that!" But what you fail to take into account is that is every day. Every single day, for thirty days. And if you miss a day, you have to make it up somehow. And when you start missing multiple days due to, oh let's say a massive alcohol-soaked trip to Mexico, you can find yourself 4K words behind just like that. *snaps fingers*

Somehow I managed not to give up. It's not really in my nature. I can take trying and failing, but giving up makes me bristle. Thankfully (sort of) I came down with a super nasty stomach flu the day after Thanksgiving that kept me at home all last weekend. At home with nothing to do = perfect time to write.

The outcome: I have just over 50K words on a YA paranormal called BANISH. Now for those of you (like the 10 of you, I realize) who follow my blog will realize, BANISH is a novel I started and trunked earlier this year. I had 14K words of it when I hit a plot/voice wall I felt I couldn't scale so I put it away to work on THE ESCAPE which I sent to my agent last month. When I decided to do NaNo, I wasn't exactly sure which novel I wanted to work on. I'd pitched some ideas to Rockstar but was still waiting on her feedback so I just decided to go with the novel that was most in my head on November 1st, and that was an untitled sequel to THE ESCAPE.

I'm superstitious about writing sequels before the first book has sold, but with the historical setting, I had all that research right at my fingertips and I had the voice and style near the front of my brain. So I started on it, at least until I heard back from Rockstar.

Which I did about two weeks later. At that point I had roughly 13,700 words on the sequel and was burning out on it a little bit. Rockstar seems to have perfect timing because as soon as she commented on my story pitches, I went back to BANISH, refreshed and ready to try it again.

Surprise, surprise, the 14K words I'd abandoned weren't as bad as I remembered. More importantly, I'd solved some of the plot and character issues so I barrelled through, full speed ahead, and finished NaNo with it.

I guess, technically, that means I cheated. But I'm okay with that.

And just to reiterate, if I EVER mention doing NaNo again, feel free to punch me right in the mouth, okay? Okay!