I haven't been religious about keeping up with my word count. I'll admit it. I feel bad about this; I feel like I'm slacking off. In a sense, promises you make to yourself are the most important ones of all. There's no one else to disappoint, so really it's a test of your own willpower. How far will you go under your own steam?
On the other hand, I do have a pretty good impetus to get this thing done: that check I'll have to write to a certain group of assholes out in Kansas. I have no intention of ever giving them anything more substantial than the finger. I will NOT be sending them money at the end of this month, because I'll be finishing my damn book!
In related news, many other cooks in the kitchen at Buffalo Wild Wings have expressed interest in reading my book when it's done. One of them, who admitted that he hasn't read a book for pleasure since he graduated high school (!), said that he's eager to read my novel. Another, who never reads for pleasure and works "a hundred hours a week" (seriously, he does!), said that he would make an exception for my book. This is flattering, and does more than a little to inflate my ego, but it's also daunting: it means people are actually going to read this thing!
In a related note, I've been debating whether I should continue on a second project after finishing this book (since it looks like I'll finish the story in less than 330 more pages). I'd like to be able to say that I finished NaNoWriMo this year, not just finished the novel I've been plunking away at for a year. Writing 50,000 words in a month just sounds so much more impressive. But I've only done a quarter of the writing, and I'm halfway through the month. That means I'd have to do three-quarters of the work in half the time.
Part of me says that just finishing the novel is enough, and I'll need the extra time to do editing anyway. What do you think? Should I keep going after I finish? Or stop punishing myself and stick with one project at a time?
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If you get your project done, take a break. Let it settle a little.
ReplyDeleteThen, start your re-writes. If you want to get anywhere with THIS project, that's what I would suggest. Otherwise, you could get caught up in another project and that would get you nowhere. Also, it's not really like you're doing REAL NaNo because you're working on finishing a pre-existing project instead of just having a go at writing a bunch of crap. (I'm not belittling NaNoWriMo; but the whole point of it is to give yourself PERMISSION to write crap and continue onwards.)