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.
Kevin Paul Shaw Broden
Four Names of Professional Creativity