November is officially over and done, the pumpkins and pumpkin spice everything being replace with white lights, cinnamon, and pine. The buzz and rush of novel writing has been replaced with the buzz and rush of finding the perfect presents for the people closest to me. Traffic is worse. Spirits are higher. The Twenty One Pilots cd in my car radio has been replaced by Let It Snow Baby, Let It Reindeer (Relient K's Christmas album). It's a wonderful time of year, made more wonderful by another successful year of NaNoWriMo.
I hit my goal and I am happy. My novel is not good. It's a rough draft, and rough drafts are not meant to be good. As Shannon Hale once said, “I'm writing a first draft and reminding myself that I'm simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.” This, I have done. Now I begin on the castles.
The Next Steps
So, moving forward, I need to revise what I've written. It sounds pretty simple on paper, but I gaze over the mangled mess that is my work in progress, I feel a profound sense of lostness. Where do I even begin?I find, when I'm not sure what I'm doing, making a list is a rather helpful thing to do.
1) Working on my series encyclopedia
This is what I am currently doing. A series encyclopedia (or series bible, depending on who you ask) is a documentation of every important character, place, and event in your novel. It's wonderfully helpful, especially when writing a series. I tend to forget little details like hair and eye color, or height, or location. It's nice to have a standard document to look back on and know for sure that yes, Lacy has hazel eyes, despite the instance on page 28 when I said they were dark brown.
2) Revising my outline
Ah, yes. Back to the old outline. My plan is to revise the outline before I actually revise the novel, so that as I am rewriting I have a guide to follow as I try and fix the major plot holes and add the major scenes I want added. I'm not looking forward to this, but it is a necessary evil.
3) Rewriting (again and again and again)
I plan to have very, very focused rewrite as I try to revise my novel. One time, I may edit for voice. One time, I may edit for setting and scenery. One time, I may edit for one character's dialogue. It's going to be a long, arduous process. I die a little on the inside each time I think about it, but again, necessary evil.
What it comes down to is this: do I believe my novel is worth more time and effort than I've given it already? Do I believe in the story? Do I believe in the characters? Will it be, in the end, worth it?
I can honestly say that I think so. I want this book to be something special; something beautiful. And with enough time, I can make it that way. I choose to believe in the story, and I choose to believe that I can accomplish this, as impossible as it seems.
So, congratulations to all who completed NaNoWriMo 2015, and congratulations to all who participated. Congratulations to all of you who write at all. You'd doing something incredibly hard, and you are incredibly brave.
Also, to all of you,
