I did it! I participated in National Finish a Draft of Your Book, I Mean, Seriously, Come On! Month (thank you, John Green, for naming this event!), and I really and truly finished a draft of my book.
This was a grand rewrite that I’ve been working on for several months now, complete with an entirely new ending. Mind you, the new parts are just a draft, so I will need to work them over. Since the new ending turned out quite different than how I was planning to write it (even better!), I will need to tweak a few details ahead as well.
But the draft is finished! Now I’m hoping to do clean up and final editing in the month of December and start shopping my novel in the New Year.
It’s a novel for middle grade readers, about a princess who doesn’t want to marry whoever wins the quest for her hand and sets out to win it herself.
Here are my stats for the month: My novel is 5,225 words longer than at the start of November. I wrote 7,356 words in my “Writing Plan.” (Every day I write about what I need to work on in the book that day in a file just for that.) And on all of my blogs, I wrote 8,561 words. For a grand total of 21,142 words in the month of November 2010. Not exactly NaNoWriMo standards, but you have to realize that I also deleted words in my book — and got divorced.
And so far in 2010, I have worked on my book (or a book) at least 30 minutes every single day. Some time I’d like to be a full-time writer, but for someone working full-time, this schedule makes amazing progress, a little bit at a time.