My Version of NaNoWriMo

So, I’m not really doing NaNoWriMo. I didn’t start a brand new novel, and I don’t have a goal of writing 50,000 words in a month.

Going along with the spirit of the month, however, I made a goal to actually, finally finish my novel that I’ve been working on for a few years now, and to write at least five days a week (which I don’t usually do).

Guess what? I’ve done it! I “finished” my novel last week and I’ve written five days for each of the two weeks this month. I say I only “finished” it because I kind of hate the way I wrote the ending. Endings are so hard, that I probably would have put off actually ending it for a long time if I hadn’t been pushing myself this month, so that was a huge success in and of itself for me.

Which is another thing—though I have finished novels before, I have always been too intimidated to go back and overhaul the whole mess of what I wrote to try and turn it into something decent. Another part of my goal this month was that if I finished my novel before the month ended, I had to spend the rest of the month editing as much as I could. I’ve already started doing that, and after my years of intimidation, I’ve discovered I really like editing. It’s addicting. One night I got so involved in it I didn’t realize how late it was getting until I looked at the clock and realized my husband had already been in bed for two hours. And even then I had a hard time stopping. I’ve discovered that editing a rough draft can even be easier than writing the rough draft, I think because I already have something to work with. I’ve been rewriting entire scenes and writing way more words per day than I was before. Who knew?

Moral of the story: I think this will help me get through a first draft a lot quicker next time because I’ll put less pressure on it to be perfect. I’ll know that rewriting it is actually much easier and more enjoyable than I had always thought. Maybe by next year I’ll even be ready to do NaNoWriMo for real.