“Victory is mine! Victory is mine…
…great day in the morning, people, victory is mine. I drink from the keg of glory, Donna. Bring me the finest muffins and bagels in all the land.” - Josh Lyman, The West Wing 102
I took some time to reflect on how November went before I started thinking about blogging again. The month ended in a rush that I wasn’t quite prepared for, which included an influx of social events, and unintentionally falling behind on my word count. Bottom line: I got it done, and I have a novel.
It was a tooth and nail fight to cross the finish line (with two hours to spare). I jumped tracks so many times I have to separate out the different things I started and didn’t finish. What I did end up doing though, is adding onto, and finishing, another NaNo novel, which is sort of against the rules, but if there are words for one project, I’m not going to force words that aren’t there. I feel like that’s the most valuable thing I’ve learned this month: if the words aren’t there, don’t force it. If the words come for something else, work on that for a while; inspiration might come afterwards.
I don’t have much else to say on the experience, except to say that I learned a lot abou the kind of writer I am, in terms of method and genre. I’m a mostly solitary writer, with fits of needing word wars and social interaction with others of my kind. It was an enormous help to unload on other Wrimos, and have a little friendly competition in the name of upping the word count. And I like to write fantasy…it cuts out the amount of research I have to do and I like to let my mind wander. I tried not writing it and I just ended up floundering in indecision and research and minutiae that I really didn’t want to deal with.
So now the completed novel sits patiently on my harddrive while I regain perspective and a set of fresh eyes. Then, in about two or three weeks, I’ll start slogging through the re-writes and the edits. And you better believe I’m going to share all of that with you.
Speaking of, I don’t even know how I’m going to tackle the edits. I’m a trained copy editor, but editing a novel is a whole different ball game to editing news articles. For one thing, the scale is completely different 700 word news article versus a 50000 word BEHEMOTH? It’s daunting to say the least.
Also, apparently my body gave out just as soon as the clock switched to Dec. 1: I’m now rocking an almighty cold that makes my head feel like it’s detached from my body, and has me hacking up a lung every half hour. I’m just happy my immune system waited until December to give up.
