December 1, 2011

What's Next?

I participated in NaNoWriMo this year for a few reasons. These reasons may include one or all of the following:

  1. I am crazy.
  2. At 38 years old, I still don't feel like I've found my "calling" and I wanted to see if writing could be it.
  3. I've always wanted to write a novel and it was time to try it.
  4. The voices in my head made me do it.
Now that I've completed it, I've been thinking about what is next. First, the book is in no way ready to publish or even consider giving it to anyone in publishing, in a publishing-related field, or who might walk close by an office building that houses a publisher. Although the book is a complete story, it probably requires about another 50,000 words to add things like character back stories and secondary story arcs. So right now, I need to decide if this is a story I want to work with. 

If so, there is a lot of work to do. That work includes editing the many extraneous words I used, because during NaNoWriMo, if something can be said in two words that you said in four, you should probably try to add a few more words.

If not, the first little bits of other stories are starting to percolate in my head. I've signed up for a fiction writing class to stay motivated. The class focuses on short stories and chapter writing, and may be a good way to re-write some of my current novel or help shape some ideas for another one. I haven't taken a creative writing class since high school English! You do not need to try to figure out how long ago that was.


And of course, I will continue blogging. And when I'm ready to hit publish, I just hit the "publish" button. Like now...

This post inspired by the prompt "What's Next?" at Kick in the Blog.

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