Vacation Over, Back to Work

The end of NaNoWriMo brings forth many emotions. If you were successful in clocking in 50K words, you’re heady with excitement. If you somehow didn’t make it (I refuse to say ‘fail’ – let’s just call it a momentary setback), you are kicking yourself in the posterior.

This year, I made it. True, the ‘finished’ product is far from a finished novel. In fact, this particular pile of slop doesn’t even have the words “The End” attached to the last page. But…the story is all there for later mucking.

After the marathon writing, squeezing in paragraphs during slow minutes at work, up early, up late while my husband was out of town, I was spent. It’s how it goes. So it’s not unusual for a certain amount of decompression to take place after all that effort.

Need I say it? The last nine days were spent in literary vacation. Oh, I read a lot, on a round trip to Colorado, especially, I just didn’t write anything.

I have pronounced the vacation officially over; it’s time to get back to work.

First off, I have a contest or two to enter, so I need to go over my intended manuscripts and make changes before the end of the month. Then I have Cadence to edit, which is now coming back to me 20 pages of edits at a time. I need to finish re-editing Virtually Yours, and also finish up Clementine.

(Note to reader: I am talking to myself. Excuse me.)

Added to my list of things to do is Christmas. Oh, the dreaded December. My daughter has decided to come home for the holiday. There’s massive cleaning (construction workers in the house, it’s terribly dusty), and other Real Life stuff, but I’m going to try my best to adhere to the wonderful schedule I managed to come up with during NaNoWriMo. Hint to other writers: it’s not so much the schedule, it’s making the most use of your time. Write as fast as you can. 🙂

That’s the entire purpose of NaNoWriMo – not to finish a novel or craft a best seller. It’s to instill a rhythm of writing.

I’m busy. How about you?