Nanowrimo bites the dust!

The book is printed and ready for editing - all 400 pages of it!

I'm so sorry that I'm a little late on this - November beat me into the ground, somewhat, and I was nowhere near as involved and active in Nanowrimo as I wanted to be. But after two days of fuzzy-brain after finishing the revisions, I can form whole sentences again!

Congratulations to everyone, no matter whether you finished your Nanowrimo project or not. Whatever you produced during the month is more than you would have in the normal course of things, and that is something to be proud of. There are many great side-effects of Nanowrimo - a sense of pride and achievement, an opening-up of the imaginative part of your brain, an ability to put your inner perfectionist on hold for a while - and I hope you are feeling some of these. I also find that, for many people, Nanowrimo gives them a heightened appreciation of the books they love. Once you have tried writing a novel you gain a greater understanding of the process, which can make you enjoy and admire your favourite books and authors all the more.

A small round-up follows! Sara and Hayley both wrote a fantastic response to the whole experience, and I think their emotions and doubts will be familiar to everyone who took part. For the full list of participants, go here.

Sara

"Some of you have asked about my novel. I mentioned how it’s more or less my second first draft, but I’ve actually been working on this story in one way or another – writing about it, researching it, thinking about it – for nearly four years. And since it’s inspired by a family story, I suppose I could say it’s been on my mind my whole life.

For the first time in all those years of work and thought, though, I feel really good about this rough draft. I believe, very much, that there is a time for everything, and I believe that’s certainly true for story telling. I see this story very differently than I did last year, and I can’t even begin to compare this rough draft with the original nearly-four-year-old essay that began this whole project. In my opinion, time spent working on a piece of writing, even if it’s put aside for a few months, even if it sits dormant for years, is rarely wasted."

Hayley

"It has not been smooth sailing.

Not even a little bit. (Okay, maybe those first couple of days of excitement, actually.)

There have been self-inflicted bribes. There have been internal boxing matches. There have been tears. There was a regular interest in giving up because what I’m writing is so crappity crap it would make Shakespeare cry, and then the entire world would drown miserably in a flood of his tears.

It seems — and I think I’m not alone in this — that when you write fiction, and the It’s Not Good Enough bug bites your leg yet again, there is no such thing as a mediocre fail. Instead, it is DOOM. It is the WORST piece of writing in the entire universe. It is the epitome of poop, and our name and picture are destined to appear in the dictionary beside ‘ABOMINATION’.

But at the same time, that’s part of the beauty of sticking with it. It’s saying “I don’t care what you, world, and you, pessimistic part of my brain, I don’t care what you both think, I’m going to do it anyway because I said that I would, and underneath all that self-doubt I really, really want to.”"

Some of you have already checked in with your final word count and progress - if you haven't, please feel free to do so in the comments. I would love to hear from you.