Saturday, February 09, 2013

NaNoWriMo 2012: Finished This Draft - 76,666 Words

That's about 307 pages and it's the second longest thing I've written so far.

As always, it was a tough slog and this time it took even longer to finish.  My last NaNo novel tops out at 76,761 words but I managed to finish it by the middle of January.  This one took almost another month of work.

There are huge plot holes.  I'm not satisfied with the end.  There are a couple of plot points which might not work and by the end I was just laying down words and leaving out some details so there's a stilted quality to the writing but this is a first draft and first drafts are shitty.

On the plus side, my characters really seemed to grow in this story.  They seem authentic and their character arcs fit them.  The story is exciting and takes place in New York City, Europe, and Asia.  And I cried at the end of the Epilogue.

I'm taking a week off from writing (this blog post excepted) then I'll finish another project that's waiting in the wings.  I'll start working on revising this draft in another month, maybe six weeks.  We'll see how I feel.

It feels good to finish.  The great thing about writing, about many endeavors for that matter but especially creative ones, is each time you finish and complete another milestone you add to your skills, increase your endurance, and learn a little more about how you work.  Writing is building slowly, completing work, working hard.  There's no getting around that fact.

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