All Dressed Up and Nothing to Write

NaNo 2012 is over.  Not in the sense that, “It’s over when I say it’s over!”, but in the sense that about ten PM last night, I typed “The End” at the bottom of the last chapter of my novel, and that was that.  Everything that’s been said is said, and it’s time to move on.

The novel is finished, there’s no more writing to do . . . and I’m feeling a little lost at the moment.

When I started the chapter last night, I was feeling a touch weepy.  It wasn’t that I had written some heartfelt prose about my characters that left me an emotional shell–no, nothing like that at all.  It was more the realization that I’d come to the end of the story, and I had maybe a couple of thousand words to write, and there was nothing more after that.

After finishing the chapter, and the novel, I felt pretty good.  It’s always a good feeling when you finish writing seventy thousand words into the computer, and there’s a bit of a rush that hits you like a soft breeze on a warm spring days.  It’s a good feeling, and you close your eyes and take in the wonder that is life–

But come the next day–which, if you’re reading this, is now–you start thinking about what’s coming next.  You have editing ahead of you.  You start having thoughts about if you’re going to send your story to a publisher for consideration, or if you’re going to try and self publishing–with each having their own particular issues one needs to hurdle.

But the biggest one comes–well, it comes about now . . .

What’s next, Sunshine?

I have an idea for a story brewing; hell, I have a few ideas brewing.  There are a couple of things that are pulling me towards writing–but there are also a few things that I want to finish up before moving on to something new.  I mean, it’s great to have a slush pile, but as we know in Northwest Indiana come winter, you gotta clear that slush, or you’re gonna track it into the house.  And right now I have maybe three projects I should get out and get published, but to do that I have to set aside time from writing new material . . .

It’s one or the other, kids.  You gotta do the work, you know?

Doesn’t mean I can’t do other things like prep work while I’m editing a story, or getting it ready for publication.  But I have realized that I need to keep at this game, because as much as I feel like I may be spinning my wheels, I also feel that I’m gaining ground.  This isn’t something I’m doing for a hobby, it’s something that I’m working towards as a career.  Doing it as a hobby is fine, but why not do it for a living?  There are worse jobs, right?  Yep, there are, because I’ve worked them.

It’s never a question of what you’re doing, it’s what’s next?  What do you want to do?  What are you going to work on?  Keep it going, baby, ’cause someone just might be waiting for that story you got bouncing about in the back of your brain–

Only they don’t know it.

Yet.

The Final Days and Nights of Abandon

Writing in the morning; writing in the evening; a lot of shopping in between.  That was Day 17 of NaNoWriMo.  Something I’ve done before, but first time this month of writing.

Today is Day 18, and I’m just about to the finish line.

Whereas the night before the words struggled to get out, last night I found it necessary to shut down after finishing the current chapters.  I ended up a couple of hundred words short of three thousand for the day, and I could have written more, but I’ve been pushing it hard for a couple of days, working through something that was kicking my butt, and I didn’t want to get into a chapter, then shut down a couple of hundred words in before heading to bed.

Why mess up a good thing?

That’s why this morning finds me thirty-two hundred words short of fifty thousand, and one of the finish lines is in sight.  I stated a long time a go that NaNo is a marathon, where you keep a steady pace and don’t worry about sprinting your way across twenty-six miles of copy.

When you hold it up to that light, then you can say:  the end of your story is the finish line, and the fifty thousand point is the wall that some runners hit.

It’s a very rare occasion–at least to my way of thinking–that when you write fifty thousand, and some plus, for NaNo, that’s it:  you are through with your novel.  I don’t mean through as in “I’ll never have to edit this sucker and make it presentable,” I mean through as in, “That’s it:  The End, put this damn thing to bed for a while.”  You’re going to go a little beyond the Fifties to get to the Endies, and that’s where the Wall is gonna come in.

Something like this happened last year.  I stared out, but before I started writing, I knew I’d venture beyond fifty thousand.  I figured, at first, maybe sixty-five, maybe seventy thousand, but not much beyond that.  Then once I was through with Part One, I was thinking, “Oh, this will be seventy-thousand,” and it wasn’t long before I knew the novel was going to hit eighty thousand . . .

At the end of Day 17, I was a little over sixty-one thousand words into the novel, and would end up writing another twenty-five thousand in the next eight days.  By the time I was into the last few chapters, I wanted it over.  Sure, I’m like that with every story–I want to write “The End” and go off and do something else–but reaching the end of Demonic Majesty was a trial.  I made it though, but it wasn’t the easiest things I’d done.

This time–not so much.  I’ve written far more in the last year before this NaNo than I had before doing Her Demonic Majesty.  That was the first real novel I’d not only written, but completed, and the experience taught me quite a lot.  This time around, there have been a few bumps in the path, but nothing that I haven’t be able to work though.

The end is near . . . but the moment has been prepared for.

And I didn’t have to fall off a radio telescope to learn that.