Wednesday, November 2, 2011

NaNoWriMo, or, 175 Pages of Typos and Hell.

As you may know, this November I participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writers Month). It is a challenge to anyone who is interested to write a novel of about 175 pages (or 50,000) words in thirty days. A previous winner (basically someone who completes the challenge) wrote the novel "Water for Elephants", which was later turned into a massive Hollywood film. So, I was tempted. Each day I wrote and posted it here for anyone to see. Five, ten, fifteen pages a day. Granted, it wasn't my best writing, or perhaps not even particularly good writing, but the fact of the matter was, I was doing it. Then I finished.

175 pages of typos and hell.

"Hmm," I thought, "now what?"

Over the past week, I have decided that after some serious editing and re-writes, it may be a decent novel, so I have decided to try to take it as far as possible. What if? Right?

So, I will be removing the NaNoWriMo posts and begin the gargantuan challenge of editing, drafting, submitting, and probably quitting writing a few hundred times.

I got a nice rejection letter from the New Yorker the other day for one of my shorts. I will have it framed.


Edit: I left the first chapter. What the hell, right?

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