#post-nano

So I'm not editing my novel right now. That's a shelf project, because I really need some distance from it. Someday in a month or six I'll pick it back up and skim over it, keep 5% of what I've written and start hashing away at completely redoing the other 95%, but for now It's just gonna sit over there where it belongs, collecting much needed dust.

In the meantime I've stumbled across this problem where I can't seem to write....anything. My brain seems to be in some kind of post nano shock. It's really disorienting because all I really want to do post-nano is write. I wanna start a piece from scratch and go through the process of writing it, nice and easy - you know that process I've really been missing for the past month. But whenever I sit down to do it either words flat out won't come or I can only do rushed messy pieces because I can't seem to switch out of that gear.

Hey all.

I know I said I was going to make an official post-NaNo thing on December 1st, yet here we are on December 5th. Basically, I've had a lot of shit going on.

Yes, I'm actually cursing this time around. I try to be formal and sophisticated on this blog and refrain from my habitual use of such coarser language, but today it's just not going to happen. I've hit maximum capacity on the crap-tolerance meter.

I realize these little anecdotes should probably go on my personal blog and not the writing blog, but honestly, writing is about raw emotion. You take those feelings and you make something beautiful out of it. So this will be a writing exercise for me. Maybe. At the very least, it'll be a distraction from the things bothering me. Anyway. Moving right along.

Before the shit hit the proverbial fan, I finished NaNoWriMo proud of myself and ecstatic that I'd managed to eke out a second consecutive win. On December 1st, I had found myself having to confront the mountain of schoolwork I had decided to ignore for the sake of my novel during almost the entire month of November. I spent my weekend trying to play catch-up. I'm still behind, but at the very least, I'm at a point where my grades are simply dependent upon the submission of a paper for each of the classes I'm taking. All I can pray for is that I do well on all of them.

But what I had wanted to say on the morning of December 1st before I found myself confronted with reality, was congratulations. Congratulations to everyone who did NaNo this year, whether you hit 50k or 5k. Because you took a step onto the precarious ledge of novel-writing and plunged head-first into the unknown realm of plot and character development. You took a leap of faith, something not many people are willing to do, and you dug deep into yourself and found a story that you felt needed to be told.

So congratulations on taking that step. You may not have had sure footing in the beginning, but I'm sure as you moved forward, you found yourself treading over solid ground. I hope that you'll continue this journey that you've begun and see it to the end.

For those of you who have already come to journey's end, we're on the long road to editing. It'll be grueling and tedious, but we'll survive it somehow. Besides, the best part about editing is that the journey gets to start all over again.