NaNoWriMon 2014 - winner! (now where did I put my life!)

'working title' only

My days of rising early to get word counts completed, of zoning out and into character's lives, plots and picturing new scenes at odd moments are over. Yes, friends I have made it. The novel is finished - I have reached the magic number of 50,000 words (and some) with a week to spare, despite starting a day late with the vaguest idea of what I was doing.

When I say the novel is finished there is a ton of work needed on it. What I have is the bare bones of a story with potential. I know the writing has suffered, my characters are not developed fully, the sub plots are almost there but need some additional work for them to gel completely. I got to know characters I wasn't intending to get to know that well as the story dictated. As for research well, that could take ages! (Yesterday at our church Christmas Fair I bought four books for £2, three of which are crime novels!). I've got a bit hooked on crime all of a sudden - I wonder why?

Would I do it again? Possibly not. It has been a great challenge and experience  but the writing did suffer with the speed I had to go at. I will now put it away for a some time and then the first thing I will do with it when I do dig it out again is to read it all through and note down stuff I didn't make of note of while I wrote (things that I forgot later and guessed at or left with question marks), draw up proper time lines and get a feel for what is working and how to improve it. The book on Police Procedure finally arrived yesterday so I will read through that but I fear it doesn't cover all I need. However, my eldest son (bless him) pointed out to me last week that indirectly I do know two people in the Police Force, one of whom is in CID. I'd not even thought about them and it was right under my nose.

First thing to do now is find my life again and start thinking about Christmas. I have lots of poetry 'out there' which I'm waiting on as well as one short story and I have tons of books to read, things to do, places to go.

I don't think I will miss these characters as much as the ones in my previous novel but I suspect that might be because I haven't spent as much time with them, one month as opposed to six months. And I need to return to that first novel at some point.

I did learn a lot from taking part in the challenge. I learned I enjoyed crime more than I thought. It led me to some interesting places and though I struggled I found I could write about some things I don't necessarily know about and that I have more than one story in me!

I already have an idea for something else which is entirely different. It's just a seed at the moment and there is no time for it yet to germinate and it may not come to anything. It's in my head only. But for now I'm winding down as this year comes to an end. I need to take stock and make some decisions.