I’m very pleased to announce that I finished my NaNoWriMo2018 project yesterday afternoon, certified it on the website, and printed my certificate. Whoop! Whoop!
To celebrate, this morning I’m wearing my NaNoWriMo2018 tee shirt for the first time. Also earlier I let myself linger over coffee and the daily Sudoku puzzle instead of flying into the home office, cranking up the Mac, and begin pounding away at the keys.
Something really interesting happened during NaNoWriMo this year. A week or so ago, I was floundering around trying to see my way through the plot of Apart in April, the fifth book in my Calendar Mystery series. Then I decided to use the methods I describe in Novel Basics, the book on novel writing that I recently published. When I did, my characters started talking to each other, and I could see them moving through at least one of the settings. Super exciting!
Now, I can’t say that my NaNoWriMo project is a complete draft of a novel. In fact, yesterday I left off after brainstorming the climactic scene of the book. So I still have three more major scenes to draft and lots of other work to do before I’ve finished even the preliminaries for writing the book. (I’m aiming for an April 2019 publication date.)
Still, I’ve reached a major stage. Now I can relax a little before I have to think much about Christmas-shopping, addressing and mailing cards, decorating the house, partying with friends.
But first . . .
Backing up to Halloween, I must confess that I got in a hurry with Novel Basics by publishing the eBook version at eight in the evening on October 31 while my daughter gave out candy to trick-or-treaters, so that on November 1, I could start working on the 50,000 words of my NaNoWriMo whatever-you-want-to-call-it—marathon, sprint write, brainstorm, really rough partial draft.
Using Novel Basics reminded me of some things I forgot to put in that book that I tell students whenever I teach the class in person. So now I have to revise that book, proofread it, republish the eBook, format the print version, do its cover, and get it out as well ASAP. Oh yeah, and I need to make postcards to give to my friends at a meeting this coming Saturday and . . . See ya!