Aaaaaand I'm Spent!

As of midnight tonight, National Novel Writing Month comes to a close.  For some, it eases out with the pop of a champagne cork, as they celebrate 50,000+ words spilled out into a manuscript in less than thirty days.  For some, it clangs shut like a steel safe door on fingers not quite ready to let it close.  For those belonging to the former, congratulations!  For those in the latter, hey, next year contains the month of November too.

Champagne, © Chris Chapman

Writing that quickly isn't for everyone, but it's an exhilarating experience.  I've never personally participated in NaNoWriMo, but I have cranked out the requisite amount of words before.  76,000 words for a complete novel in 26 days flat.  It was quite the rush.  I was on a roll.  And I didn't stop until the novel was finished.

Agatha Christie Books, © Eric Huang

Not everyone can write that fast.  A number of authors were renowned for writing slow.  J.R.R. Tolkien took twelve years to write the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and didn't publish it until 17 years after The Hobbit was published.  Some authors, like Agatha Christie, could crank out a novel in a couple of weeks.  That's pretty fast for anyone, even if you're cranking out formulaic serials.  Getting pen to paper, or in today's digital age, getting pixels to word document, isn't easy.  It takes dedication, no matter how long it takes you.

Agatha Christie, © Eric Huang

So once you finish cramming in those last few thousand words, take a moment to congratulate yourselves and reflect on your accomplishment, no matter how many words you've written, even if it's Day 29, and you have 47,000 words to go.  Allow yourselves to feel like Agatha Christie for a day.

And then let it sit.  Don't send it off to a literary agent right away - ask any of them - they'll tell you the same thing.  It's going to be a long time, and several more edits, before that baby is ready for prime time.  No novel is ready after a single pass.  Hell, a lot of them aren't ready after several.  Even when you've edited it until you think it's completely perfect, it will get hacked to pieces by agents and editors and béta readers.  But that's a good thing, trust me!  After getting Separate Worlds back from my editor recently, I was shown firsthand just how much another set of eyes can do for a story.

You're full of enthusiasm now, and you can hardly wait to share your masterpiece with the world.  They'll see it all in due time.  For now, let it rest a bit, take a break, and get involved with another project.

Trunk it!

Trunk, © Brian Ford

No, not that one.  This one!

Steamer Trunk, © Justin Masterson

And once again, congrats on a job well done.

National Novel Writing Month

It's that time of the year, when inspiration strikes and authors around the globe begin madly writing.  NaNoWriMo is an interesting and very challenging concept, begun in 1999, designed to help jump start someone into actually finishing a novel, often for the first time.  The goal is to complete 50,000 words in one month.  It's a lofty goal, but one that often works exactly as it's designed to do.  I'm seeing a ton of folks doing it this year, and that's a great thing.  Keep at it, boys and girls!

I'm not participating this year.  Obviously it's not because I don't believe it's a great idea.  It is.  It's just not what I need to be doing at the moment.  I have a stack of finished novels already.  I can crank out another one to add to the pile at any time, and actually have two of them I'm dying to finish.

But priorities being what they are, I'm putting them off for now because I have editing to do.  I'm still working with my editor on Separate Worlds, and will be working on another novella to follow in my foray into the self-publishing world.  As such, they're short term goals, and that is what needs to occupy my mind and my time this month.

And when I'm not working on those projects these days, I'm doing a final edit on the first three books of the Plexus.  That's a much larger project, and one I need to spend some concentrated effort and time on.  It's a whole lot of fun, but it's also a ton of work, something I really shouldn't cut away from to write another book.

I'm tempted to, though.  Boy am I tempted to!  My next two books are very exciting ones, and I'm dying to get into them.  One's a dark murder mystery involving a ghost in Spokane's famous 1909 Looff Carousel.  The other is a chilling tale of horror based on the story I related a couple of posts back, about that terrifying experience on Mount Ellis in Southwestern Montana.  Yes, I want very badly to jump aboard, even a week or two late and throw myself into one of them.

But I can't.  It would be counterproductive, which is the exact opposite of what NaNoWriMo is supposed to accomplish.  NaNoWriMo is supposed to get you off your butt and working on that novel, and working on one of those, while productive in the sense I'd finish up another novel, isn't what I need at the moment.  I need those finished novels edited.  I need to concentrate on getting them perfected and polished further, so they'll be ready for publication.

So, those of you participating this year, know that I'm extremely jealous, but at the same time, I'm perfectly happy editing instead of writing.  The Plexus is a fantastic story, and one I simply must get perfect.  In baseball terms, it's two outs, two strikes, bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth in a tied game.  Sure, I can win the game with a single, but it's a grand slam waiting to happen, and it's up to me to deliver.

And that's why we edit.