NanoWriMo - A Novel this November

Am very proud of my fiancée Shannon Muir as she begins working on her latest novel as part of NanoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). As she types away at her keyboard, I know several of my online friends are doing the same thing.

I was contemplating starting one as well, but have too much to do this month.

You see, just days ago, I types the two most glorious words to an author, and I typed them twice.

"The End"

I typed it first on a short story, which I submitted to a publisher for consideration as part of an anthology.

Then I typed them again on my first novel.

Two years ago I did participated in NanoWriMo, and completed the novel I worked on that November, but it was far from perfect and had so much in it that there is no way I could truly consider it finished. Even now I know it needs a page one rewrite.

However, about two weeks into that NanoWriMo, I had an idea for a new story. The concept came to me whole, and while not wanting to interrupt the book I was working on; I jotted down a full page of notes of this new tale and put it aside.

But the more I worked on the story for Nano, the more my thoughts lingered to the new one. So when December rolled around, I jumped head first into the new novel.

The first draft of the story flew from my finger over the next few weeks, though I had to admit that the climax stunk. So in the rewrite I discovered other characters that lived with in my novel's world and had their own parts of the story to tell.

As I asked more questions about the characters and the world they lived in the story expanded and became much better.

With Shannon acting as my editor, I went through several rewrites and the story kept getting better. Much more so than what I had originally jotted down in a flash.

Now the novel is finished and I am currently painting the cover art and formatting it properly to be release as an ebook, by the end of November.

All this resulted from NanoWriMo. My original book sits in a virtual sock drawer, and one day will come back to life.

This has been a great experience for me, and I wish an equally great experience to all my friends that are writing their novels this November.

Keep Writing.