NANOWRIMO: The Last Day

The actual total is: 70,684 words- but 50,000 words was never my goal with this. I wanted to use NANOWRIMO to kick start my third book. It was in desperate need of a kick in the ass. I had a few chapters here and there and I knew how it was going to end, but I felt like I was writing myself into corners and circles and I was tired of it. So, I sat down and made an outline- two to three days of frantic outlining and then November 1st, I started writing and I didn't stop until I got it all done.

I have what I wanted: a working draft of my third book. Is it perfect? Not in the slightest. Is it anywhere close to being ready to publish and let out into the world? Not at all. But I have a starting point to work with and that's amazing. My first two books had to be carved out of a pile of words and made, forged into the books they became. I'm going to have fun beating this one into shape, but for now I'm going to take a well-deserved break and let it flavor up a bit before I jump back in and start the revising process. My goal is to get it into good enough shape to fling it out into the world for real in 2019- if I do my job right, then I might be in a position to jump in and do this again- this time though, for real, from scratch and the very beginning.

The process was interesting and yet very boring: I had an outline and I just followed that and took everything one section and one chapter at a time. A lot of times with my writing, I like to tinker around a lot- I like to get things 'perfect' and sometimes I overthink them. This time I just plowed through and kept right on going- all with the goal of getting to that elusive working draft that I wanted.

This is my first 'win' for NANOWRIMO. I sure hope it won't be my last.

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