After 30 days and 51,893 words, #NaNoWriMo2018 is over. However, the first draft to book three of the Joel Brent series, Reunion, isn't. It went from being a complete story to a compilation of scenes. But that's not a bad thing. I wrote some scenes in advance and improvised others.
What happened?
The writing process went from writing one story to writing a story that wanted to be written. That's the bane of a pantser. The upside is I may have inadvertently set up two books.
For a time, I was also nearly 10,000 words behind. Luckily, during Thanksgiving week, I was able to catch up with the word count. But that's when I noticed the draft becoming a compilation of scenes versus rounding into a good story. It's not a case of scenes that have nothing to do with each other. They're related and connected. I need to do some strategic editing to get it all together. Some scenes have to go while others have to be written or expanded on.
But you made your word count goal. Isn't that a positive?
Of course, it is. The story is far more developed, even with the competing storylines, than it was a month ago. I'm also happy to be a NaNoWriMo winner for the first time in three years.
Another positive is I bought Scrivener. I wrote the majority of the draft there. I love this software. Thanks to the corkboard, I realized a few scenes had to be moved around and I was easily able to do so. There's still more to learn.
Now it's time to let this draft rest and focus on my day job. Christmas break would be a good time to start editing book two of the Joel Brent series, Lake Ramsey.
Congrats to all of the #NaNoWriMoWinners.
