NaNoWriMo

This week I finished chapters 31-33 of my middle grade manuscript that I’m trying to write in a month for National Write a Novel in a Month Month or NaNoWriMo. And I did it. I got all the way through my chapter outline and finished the story. I wrote the last chapter of the climax, the wrap up chapter, and the closing image chapter from Blake Snyder’s “Save the Cat” outline. I ended writing the rough draft at 42,759 words.

Then I went back and started revising. I do not write near as much when I am revising and I was pretty sure that I wasn’t going to make the 50,000 word goal for NaNoWriMo since I finished the fast first draft writing and had gone on to revision. But I was praying for some good ideas for new scenes and as I was laying in bed trying to sleep I had four or five good ideas and these plus my revisions brought me up to 50,070 words.

I couldn’t believe it! I’ve been watching people do NaNoWriMo for a decade and wanting to do it myself but I was pretty sure it was impossible. The most I have ever written in a month was the 23,000 word Novella that my lovely sister challenged me to do and I barely made that goal. But even though I never signed up on the official NaNo website, I completed my own NaNoWriMo goal of 50,000 words on my own. This is a huge deal for me and I am feeling really good about it.

Anyway, now that I’ve written that rough draft and revised about half of my story until it reached 50,000 words I have a lot of work to do. My plan, go back and revise the novella manuscript I wrote in September and submit it to my editor and see if she likes it. Then I want to revise and polish this middle grade ms. until May when my lovely sister and I get to go to the North West Christian Writer’s Renewal conference together. Then I hope to pitch this story to agents at the conference. We’ll see who is coming and what kind of books they represent. Anyway, I am pretty dang happy with this month’s work and ready to move on to a whole bunch of revisions over the next six months.