NaNoWriMo 2008: The End

30 November 2008 431 views 12 Comments

I made it! As of tonight, 12:15am, my very first novel is complete. I will call myself a writer from now on :D

Writing today and last night has been quite difficult. I knew what needed to happen and how, but yesterday I was incredibly tired and today my neck decided to remind me every single second that is is very dissatisfied with the choice of desk and chair I am using. Very uncooperative, really. So I had to retire to my bean bag and write from there, which slowed me down considerably. But I made it anyway.

I know the end is not perfect (neither is my story), but it at least has a beginning, a middle and and end. And I think when I go through it for a re-write, I will be able to make much more use of some of the loose ends and threads I wove into it.

As for now, I am satisfied. I took up one of Jarsto’s advice and ended the thing nicely with an epilogue. I can still turn that into a chapter later on, but for now everything is tied up and put into place. I even managed a happy end, even though it looked for quite a while like I’d have to kill one of my MC’s. But both are still alive and … well, kicking might not the *best* description of what they do right now, but I won’t go into that. Let’s give them a little privacy.

Since I am very, very tired again I will write my final thoughts on my first NaNo in a later post. There are quite some things I would like to muse about, but – later. Right now I am happy that I am finished because that will give me the chance of actually relaxing when I visit my parents tomorrow. Not to speak of all the sleep I am going to get …

For now I will retire to bed with a complete novel (I can’t say that often enough) and a total word count of 103,152 words. And here was me thinking I’d have trouble reaching 50K! ;)

“It’s all here, in these pages.”
- Citizen G’Kar, Babylon 5, »Point of no return«

12 Comments »

Jarsto said:

Congratulations. Both on getting past 100k, and on reaching the end of the novel. I still remember what it felt like the first time I got to type “The End” at the end of a novel. If you’re anything like me you’re going to have a very enjoyable day tomorrow, because while there are times you don’t really want the writing to end (at least I have those times) the feeling of having produced a full novel is incredibly satisfying as well.

As for the ending – and the story – not being perfect yet: of course they’re not it’s a first draft. Repeat after me class: “First drafts are allowed to suck.” Perfection, or even something close to it, is (virtually) never going to happen without a little (or a lot) of editing. But that’s okay. You’ve finished a first draft, and without doing that there would be nothing to edit.

If you’ll take my advice you’ll leave this manuscript for a few months. Write something else or do something to keep your hand to in the writing game a little, but just leave the manuscript for what it is. Then after a couple of months read it, and start thinking about whether you want to edit it. (Reading it once right now is fine, but leave it a couple of months and read it again before thinking about edits.)

The reason for the wait is simple. I know from experience that anything I write makes sense if I read it less than a month later. Because all the little things I assumed while writing. And all the little details I filled in mentally, but not in the novel, are still fresh in my mind. But when I’ve left a novel for a couple of months, and done a few other things in between. Those same points that made so much sense at the time will make me look up and go ‘huh?’, because by then all that mental baggage has faded and I can look at it through – more or less – fresh and unbiased eyes.

And that’s not just a way to kill the ‘huh?’ effect either. I find that, next to the inexplicable bits, I also tend to run across bits that are way better than I ever remembered them being. There’s little that’s more enjoyable than having a story surprise you, or make you laugh, and then realising it was your own first draft, and not something someone else wrote.

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Starstuff Reply:
November 30th, 2008 at 10:19 pm

Hello Jarsto,

first of all, thanks for that great comment, especially at that time of night :) Sorry that I’ve taken my time to answer, but I’ve slept till noon today and I just couldn’t work up the enthusiasm to write something at all today – wonder why that is? Funnily enough, all the time I had enhancements to my story pop up in my head, but while I jotted them down, I didn’t touch the story itself.

Your advice on leaving the piece of writing alone for a while is very good, I had intended to do just that. I have witnessed the same phenomenon you have – reading it again too soon doesn’t help because one remembers to much about the story. Once the details are blurred, than it starts to be fun. I only wish I would have had this luxury with my final thesis. When I read it again four months after I handed it in, I was surprised by how well I argued, but my sentences were sometimes h o r r i b l e. :roll:

So my plan is to put the story away for at least a month and then have a look again. While I have another story already in my head, I really don’t want to write right now. I long for some long sleeps, regular bedtimes before midnight or even 1am, and being able to concentrate on work.

But ask me again in a week or so when the urge to write might become stronger again. Good luck to you on finishing your story in the last hour and forty-five minutes :)

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Jarsto Reply:
November 30th, 2008 at 11:43 pm

I’m looking forward to a nice long lie-in tomorrow. Sure there’s stuff to be done, but it can all wait until the afternoon as far as I’m concerned.

A few more points of synchronicity from past experience:

1) It’s perfectly normal (almost expected) to have a post-NaNo dip, especially if you have a high wordcount. The trick is to find a way to make sure it doesn’t last much beyond December (where the holiday season always kills a lot of writing anyway).

2) I’ve often run across good story/article/whatever but bad sentences in the past. One trick to deal with that is to edit in reverse. You read the last sentence, edit that as a sentence, and then go back to the second to last sentence. You just do that, one sentence at a time, until you get to the first sentence. That way you’re only focusing on the beauty of the sentence and on the grammar and spelling – not on the story/content. I once read somewhere that J.R.R. Tolkies edited the whole of The Lord Of The Rings this way.

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Starstuff Reply:
December 1st, 2008 at 8:43 am

LOTR backwards?!?!? Oh my, that must have taken him an eternity! But the idea is actually pretty cool.
So it would be editing for content first, and then editing for grammar and vocabulary. This is a really good advice, thanks!

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# 30 November 2008 at 1:06 am

C.H.Andas said:

Hallo Starstuff,

Herzlichen Glückwunsch zum Beenden des NaNoWriMo und des Romans. Mit über 100.000 Wörtern hast du ein absolutes Mamutwerk geschaffen.
Ich mache es auch so, dass ich paar Monate meinen NaNoRoman nicht anrühre. Der Dezember ist sowieso voll mit anderen ganz dringenden Aufgaben. ;-)
Dir ganz viel Spaß und lass uns in der nächsten Woche feiern ;-) Vielleicht bei einem Kaffee in der Neustadt, oder kannst du Kaffee nicht mehr sehen? :-)

Clara

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Starstuff Reply:
December 1st, 2008 at 8:44 am

Vielen Dank für die Glückwünsche, ich hab gesehen, dass du es ja auch ein ganzes Stück über die benötigten 50K geschafft hast – muss gleich noch mal zu deinem Blog rüberschleichen und gucken :)

Und ja, wir haben uns definitiv einen Drink verdient … Email dazu kommt heute noch :)

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# 30 November 2008 at 11:58 pm

babylonlurker said:

Congratulations Starstuff on your completion of your novel and “2 NaNoWriMo’s”.

It is good to see you succeeding.

I made my much more modest target as well : at least one blog entry per day in November. Now I, too will relax the blogging a bit, but try to get out one or two postings per week.

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Starstuff Reply:
December 1st, 2008 at 9:45 pm

Thank you very much, Jan! And I have to admit I was so busy writing I didn’t even get to head over to your blog and read it. :roll: I promise I’ll do better from now on.

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babylonlurker Reply:
December 2nd, 2008 at 5:52 pm

I see you’ve done your share, thanks for the interest.

You are now on my blogroll as well

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# 1 December 2008 at 12:13 pm

Matthias said:

Congratulations! To be honest, I admire your perseverance and dedication with which you pursued your goal. Now you have a complete novel of your own and you can be very proud of it. I followed your efforts and progresses regularly but did not comment for a reason.

On a related note, one of your favorite blogs recently reported on the NaNoWriMo (see here). Just wanted to let you know in case you were too busy writing to follow what’s going on elsewhere.

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Starstuff Reply:
December 2nd, 2008 at 4:10 pm

Hi Matthias, thanks and great to hear from you again. Thanks for the link, tschilai pointed me there about a week ago, I thought it was hilarious.

How’s the family “business” going?

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Matthias Reply:
December 2nd, 2008 at 5:16 pm

All is well as far as I can tell. The baby is due on February 10th, although that doesn’t mean, of course, that the little one will see the light of day at this very date. It’s gonna be a boy, in case I haven’t told you already. At the moment my wife and I are struggling to agree on a name. We’re making progress, though.

Speaking of my wife, she is feeling remarkably well at the moment, given that it’s only two months until the due date. It must however be expected that her pregnancy will cause all kinds of discomfort pretty soon, e.g. with regard to sleeping, weight, mobility and the like. And don’t tell anyone, but from a man’s point of view I totally don’t envy any woman giving birth. Must be a painful process. Hard to believe that many women decide to go through this experience time and again. Still, I have decided to accompany my wife and be present at the hospital when the time comes.

I’m totally looking forward to it, but there’s still a bit of an unsettling feeling to it. I guess it’s the uncertainty of what to expect and the responsibility of being a father.

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# 2 December 2008 at 12:48 pm