I Finished NaNoWriMo! Now What?!
National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short, is a nationwide novel writing competition in which participants attempt to write fifty thousand words in a month’s time each November. But what do you do with that those words once the contest is over? Below are a few tips.
CELEBRATE
Seriously. You accomplished something in a month that takes some writers an entire year. For reals. A reported 200 million Americans want to write a novel; you are now part of the extremely small fraction of those who actual do. So celebrate that fact. Revel in it. Call up your third grade English teacher who said you’d never write anything, and rub her nose in it.
What if I didn’t finish?
Don’t sweat it too much. Lots of people don’t finish. It’s probably not even entirely your fault. November is a terrible month to try and write a whole novel in thirty days. When NaNoWriMo started, it was held in October, which was still a bad time to write a novel, but it was orders of magnitude better than November. If you didn’t finish, you are still a lot farther along than someone who didn’t write anything, or those authors who putter around taking an entire year to write a book. So finish. You’ve got plenty of time, and now the pressure’s off. And you’re not done. So get back to it.
Even If You Finished NaNoWriMo, You’re Still Not Finished
Let’s be honest. fifty thousand words is a lot of words, but depending on the genre you’re writing in it might not be enough. It’s enough for the pulpy science fiction I write (just barely). It’s enough for most mysteries. But it’s not enough for, say, Epic Fantasy. Bottom line: most publishers don’t consider 50k a novel nowadays. So get it ready for prime time. Keep going. Keep working on it. Keep writing.
It’s Not Ready. Yet.
Even if you reached the finished line, your book still isn’t ready. It’s just not. No matter how brilliant you think your golden prose is. No matter what a special snowflake you think you are. I know you pinned all your hopes and dreams on this one book, and you think this is The One that’s going to rescue you from that Dead End Job. And you’re already imagining who will play your leads in the movie, and what streaming service will get the TV series, Netflix or Hulu? But trust me on this, because I’ve been where you are now. It’s. Not. Ready. It’s not ready. It’s not ready.
At least not yet.
I don’t know how good a writer you already are. I don’t know what else your book needs. It might just need a light polish. It might need someone to go through it and ferret out typos. It might need locking away in a drawer and never being seen again. It might need a good cleansing fire. I’m not going to tell you that you have to rewrite it five times, or hire a developmental editor. But here are some tips to help you improve your book:
Put it away for a while. Stick it in a drawer and go do something else for a while. When you come back to it, after you’ve forgotten your main character’s first name and can’t remember every detail of the romance subplot, go back to it and read it with fresh eyes.
Read it aloud. Read. It. Out. Loud. Reading it aloud helps you catch things you might not ordinarily notice. It will also make you notice the cadence and musicality of your language, which will help you improve it. This will also help turn your novel into a terrific audiobook, and audiobooks are the next big thing. Just sayin’.
Get someone else to read it. Not your mother. Not Aunt Helen the retired English teacher grammar nazi. You need honest feedback on your work, and that means someone who will be completely honest with you, good or bad. And if it’s so terrible it can’t be saved, then burn it and move on to the next book.
Write the Next Book. And the Next
NaNoWriMo is great for giving you a taste of what it’s actually like to be a productive, working writer. It’s an extreme method, of course. Most professional writers don’t write fifty thousand words in a single month. But it gives you a picture of what living like a writer over the long haul might be like. Did you like the experience? Want to do this full time? Then you’ve only got one thing to do: write the next book, the next thing. And the one after that, and the one after that.
Because that is how you become and stay a writer. As Chuck Wendig so aptly put it, writing is a long game, not a short con. If you want the TV and/or movie deal, you need to write a lot of books. Because the more you write, the better you’ll get, and because you have no idea which book will connect with your audience.
Have Fun!
NaNoWriMo is a freaking pressure cooker! Who needs that kind of stress? I sure as hell don’t. Writing is hard enough without trying to throw up as many words as you can in as short a period of time as you can. You’re creating art, not trying to get into the Guiness Book of World Records. So do the NaNoWriMo thing. Enjoy the writing as performance art aspect of it, but don’t let it pressure you into thinking you always have to perform at that high level. So remember, have fun. You get to make shit up. Hopefully someday for a living. So enjoy it. Have fun with it. Whether you do NaNoWriMo every year or you never touch it again. Write. Have fun. Life is too damn short to do it any other way.
