Okay. 52,000 words and more than a hundred pages later, having finally accomplished the dual goal of writing at least fifty thousand words and finishing a manuscript:

My biggest thought is that “National Novel Writing Month” is a misnomer. I’m thinking it’s probably snappier than “National Write a Crappy Barebones First Draft Month”, though. NaWriCraBaFirDraMo just doesn’t flow the way NaNoWriMo does. I said it before and I’ll say it again: The product of this NaNoWriMo is not, for me at least, a novel. It is far, far from a finished product — and I’d place good money that the other 32,000+ NaNo “winners” are in the same boat. Maybe there is someone, somewhere in the world, who can sit down and bang out fifty thousand words in a month and turn out a complete, publication-ready final draft. I don’t know who this person is, but I congratulate them on their skill.

For the rest of us? There’s a reason why March is NaNoEdMo (National Novel Editing Month). It’s because reaching the endpoint of NaNoWriMo is, if I can be a little clichéd for a moment, not the end of the writing process but the beginning. We started this with an idea. What we have now is still only an idea, but better developed. NaNo is less about creating, I think, than it is exploring. I almost hesitate to even call what I have a “draft”; it’s not really Nia 1.0, it’s more like Nia 0.1 Beta.

Was it worth participating? Yes, I think so, on more than one level. This is far more than I ever would have done otherwise, even if I stop right here (which I don’t intend to). Nia is never going to be the next great American novel; I doubt if she’ll ever see the inside of a publisher’s office even to be rejected, much less published. But it’s been a good exercise in figuring out how novels are put together. I read and read and read, and I can learn from that, but it’s like the difference between being driven somewhere in someone else’s car and going yourself. Or the difference between listening to Clapton play the guitar and actually training your fingers to do the same thing. It’s one thing to observe and another entirely to do. Only by doing can I ever make any headway in this area, and NaNo is excellent motivation for that.

Will I do it again next year? I don’t know. At this point, I have two complete novel drafts, both unedited, just waiting for more attention. I think they kind of need a little bit of work, at least, before I go stacking up more unedited drafts to deal with. But then I’ve got a lot of monthly projects to go through before I get to next November, and nine opportunities to focus on editing and revising those two existing manuscripts. (This month and next are already filled. Stay tuned for details on January’s tentative project, which involves an opportunity for audience participation, later in the month.) What I’ll probably do is go ahead and line up a concept, maybe even work on outlining it and stuff (because that’s good practice too, even if I never use it), during one of my other writing months when I need a break from whatever editing I’m doing. Then I’ll have something if I choose to take another crack at a third novel, or… not. Maybe I’ll still do writing in November, but dedicate it to editing and revising instead. Who knows?

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