I managed to finish my novel last week, at around 120, 000 words. Once Nanowrimo was over and I stopped padding the word count, everything went along pretty quickly. To be honest, I kind of hurried through the last two battles because I wanted to be done with that monster draft. But I finished it, which means I get to spend my Christmas break creating a plan of attack for the next edit of Moonshadow’s Guardian.
For those of you still finishing your novels, keep going. Take advantage of whatever time you have off to squeeze in an extra half hour of writing in. No matter how much or how little time you have off, you can still take advantage of a slice of it to finish your novel.
And for those of you who, like me, have finished novels, I have a challenge for you. I’m planning to completely restart a very twisted paranormal romance-ish short story I wrote during the summer, aiming this time to make it a bit longer to include the main characters’ trek through the country they’re in. It’s the first short story I’ve written in a very long time that takes place in this world, and it happens to take place a very long time ago in Scotland, so this will be research intensive. Don’t worry, I’m not asking you to do a lot of historical research.
I am, however, asking you to challenge yourself to write either one fairly long short story–I’m thinking somewhere between 10-15K for mine–or a couple of shorter short stories between now and January ninth. That may seem like a completely arbitrary date for you, but that’s when my break ends and it also gives everyone two weeks to create something they enjoy. I’m not asking you to edit this right now, and in fact, in the new year I’ll be writing a couple posts about editing short stories before I break into novels.
So over the next two weeks, set aside some time for yourself to write. Don’t let anyone interrupt you. Right now we’re going to write some stories together, and in the New Year, we’re going to turn them into publishable stories.
What are you working on this holiday season?
Greetings:
Regarding goals, I’m catching up on a stack of reading that I’ve been dying to get to.
Also – I like the idea of a long short story. That might tie in well with the prompt from your last post. I need to get back to Elgin and sort out what’s been happening in that universe. And/or finish my second Nano novel (also a bunch of characters who are suspended in mid action wondering what is going to happen next).
We’ll see how far we get. As always, your blog is my non-nano reason to write. 😀
cheers!
rp
Hi RP,
Hope you’re enjoying your reading. I got a Kindle for Christmas and a gift certificate for Musa. So far I’ve got seven or eight books on my Kindle, all from Musa, and I’m well into the first one I started, Dragon Night. It’s cool because I really wanted to read the stories I’ve picked up after talking with their authors and setting up interviews, but I have difficulty sitting down and reading anything novel-length on a computer screen. The Kindle screen, plus its ability to be easily read on the subway, mean I suspect I’ll be reading a lot more ebooks in 2012 than I did in 2011.
I think a long short story is perfect for this time of year. We’ve all got some time off, we’ve had time to recuperate from Nanowrimo and to finish our novels, and we want to do something different. And nobody really wants to start a novel length project right before the New Year starts, so instead we’re working on something fairly small that should, with any luck, be quick and fun.
Good luck reconnecting with Elgin–sometimes characters get mad and make that part rather difficult–and I hope this holiday season is a productive one for you.
Thanks for stopping by,
~Dianna