It’s finished!
My NaNo novel, Chasing Credit, is done.
Actually, hang on – NO – it’s not finished!
Although I’ve officially ‘won’ NaNoWriMo this year again, Chasing Credit is far from complete. I did pretty well, achieving 52,574 words in less than 30 days and hitting the 50,000 mark on the 25th November. But, my personal aim was to achieve 60,000 words and to have written the end of the story, leaving gaps in the middle to fill in later. So, I haven’t hit 60,000 words and I haven’t reached the end, yet.
With two half-finished NaNo novels on my hard drive, I’m determined not to have a third. This is one I must complete.
But, first things first, I am going to return to my other novel, The Reluctant Scribe. The first draft of this is finished. In fact, I finished it on the last day of October in a desperate flurry of writing in order to clear the way for the beginning of NaNo. I am nervous about the redrafting/rewriting stage, having never got this far with a novel before. Recently I’ve bought Alan Watt’s book, The 90-day Rewrite, and I hope he guides me through the process. Will start working on the re-edit on 2nd December but for the next few days I am having a welcome break.
I spent most of yesterday writing and re-writing the same scene. It is an important scene and one I wanted to get right. This morning, I went back to the same darn scene and started reworking it again. After a while, I realised I was never going to make my word count target today if I didn’t stop fiddling.
Ruth Livingstone 