NaNoWriMo Day 25: Got book?

I did it! My official NaNoWriMo word count is 50,059. I get slightly more than that when I run the word counter in Microsoft Word, but hey, who's counting? Not me! Not anymore! I'm done!! And I still have time to go battle the crowds in search of a bargain or two.

HAPPY DANCE TIME!!

Here are the answers to some of the questions I've gotten over the past several weeks. I was too busy writing my behind off to answer them at the time.

Mother Goose Mouse wants to know:
Before you started NaNoWriMo, did you have an outline for your planned novel, or has it been stream of consciousness?

I had thought about the plot and had written a 100 word synopsis, but that's it. After I started writing, I realized that my initial plot idea would have created a story that ended after 20,000 words. That's when I started creating subplots and plot twists, etc. In that way, it's been stream of consciousness although I've tried to keep it realistic enough (no space ships to get me out of sticky plot issues) so that I'll be able to edit it later into something that might pass as readable fiction.

She also wants to know:
What happens to all of these novels that come from NaNoWriMo? Are they submitted en masse to publishing houses?

What happens to the novels is up to the individual writers. You can go on and edit your work and try to get it published. Or you can burn it in the fireplace. Or both.

NaNoWriMo doesn't do anything with the novels besides run a word counter on the files and immediately delete them. You get nothing from completing the contest except the sense of satisfaction from finishing something you started.

There are people who have successfully completed NaNoWriMo and gone on to publish their NaNo book, including Jon F. Merz, Lani Diane Rich, Sarah Gruen, Rebecca Agiewich, Dave Wilson, Gayle Brandeis, and Kimberly Llewellyn. In general, one or two participants every year (out of the three to six thousand who complete NaNoWriMo), get to see their book grace a bookstore shelf.

Elizabeth wants to know:
Are you going to post a link to your novel once it's done so all your dedicated blog readers can check it out?

Short answer: No.
Long answer: No. First, I want to do some editing on it. Then, if I think it's good enough I'll maybe try and get it published. If, after I work on it some more, I think it's garbage, I'll put it in a drawer and move on to the next story. If one day the novel is published, then you can see it.

In general I like the idea of blogging about writing a novel, but not the idea of blogging a novel. I think it's a lot to ask people to read unedited works of fiction, unedited works of anything actually.

Mother In Chief wants to know:
How do you manage to write that much a day with kids?

I found that pure writing--with no editing--takes much less time than I thought. It really wasn't hard for me to write my daily goal of 2,000 words while the kids played. I was interrupted a lot, but I'm used to that. I did try and write when at least one of the kids was napping, but I didn't wait until after they were asleep because I go to bed not long after they do. The best time for me to write is in the morning and that's what I tried to do.

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