NaNo-Ed-Mo

Nanowrimo is coming up in just seven days (which means that my birthday is in fifteen days!) I never blogged about this, but on October 8th, I finished the first round edits for my novel. That's 8 months, 22 days since completing my rough draft on January 16th.

This will be my third year participating in (and hopefully winning) Nanowrimo. In 2009, I wrote a 10,000 word story that was...really, really, bad. Soon after completing this horrible story, on December 19th, I began the novel I am still working on. All I wrote on December 19th was the prologue. I didn't even look at that for almost another 5 months. That's when I decided that I could actually go somewhere with it (although where exactly, I am still unsure of.)

Two things contributed to me finishing the rough draft when I did. The first was Nanowrimo 2010. I set a word count goal of 15,000, met it, and along the way I,
a) abandoned my outline
b) discovered a plot the characters wanted to follow
c) got through the tough middle part of my novel

The second thing that helped the rough draft finally come together was the snow storm in January 2010. We were out of school for something like 14 days. Of course, the first few days were filled with snowball fights and sliding down the street. But then I realized how cold it was, and suddenly my snuggie and my novel looked very inviting. For 14 days straight, I plodded through the final chapters of my novel and finished at around 11:30 pm.

These past 8 months and 22 days, I slacked off with the editing. Long periods of time went by when I didn't edit. But I wrote, and I thought.

In the book, I'd Rather Be Writing, by Marcia Golub, it has a quote by an author whose name I cannot remember that goes something like this: "What my wife doesn't understand is that even when I am staring out the window, I am writing."

Thinking = writing.
Writing = allowing your hand to move on its own while your brain continues thinking.

Anyways, this brings me to Nanowrimo 2011.

I don't want to start another novel, but I can't measure editing by word count. So, I am twisting Nanowrimo into NanoEdmo. National Novel Editing Month. I'm going to set a page count goal for the number of pages I want to edit during November. 

Seven days away...wish me luck!