Crossing 50K

So, at about 4PM on November 30th, 2010. I won NaNoWriMo 2010. And I feel absolutely great about doing so.

I was a little disappointed in my final thousand words, if I’m honest. The story had pretty much folded back down into it’s little box, so I was just padding out the ending with some fluffy rubbish. Yes, I could’ve gone back in and added things, tweaked this, played with that, but I felt that it would  be foolish at this late stage to do anything that could be construed as editing or revising, so I just tacked on as much fluff to the end as I could to cross that finish line.

So yeah. I was pretty diligent in keeping tabs of my progress, with judicious use of a stopwatch and a well-crafted spreadsheet I found off the Internet (Eric Benson’s NaNoWriMo tracker; search for it). This data makes the following graphs possible. I won’t go into any detail, but arrive at your own conclusions for yourself. Click each chart for a clearer view:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, as my book is set in an alternate, steampunk-fantasy version of 1910, it gave me scope to be as creative and inventive as I liked. There are lots of minor, and some major, bits that I would love to add, and will be, to make this a final story that I am ready to present to the world in it’s own right. But that will take time. I’ll spend the next considerable time working, reading through, jotting notes on what to add, what to trash and what to amend. It also gives me time to answer a question:

What do I want to do with this thing?

As I see it, I have two options:

1. I edit and polish the text, make it into something I’m proud to show people, and publish it myself via CreateSpace, who, in their generosity, give all NaNoWriMo winners a code to get one free paperback proof copy and list it on Amazon (who owns them) and they’ll publish it independently on a print-to-order basis. This would be a good start to get the book out there.
2. I try to find a professional publisher for my novel. This would take time and hard work, but ultimately, I would love to do it. I’ll probably self-publish it for now, and, in the event that a main publisher takes it up at some point, rescind the self-publishing listing and go down that path.

These are things that I will think about and consider.

I’d also like to give a quick mention to the soundtrack to my noveling experience, which I have been listening to a lot lately and love – that being Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds. It got me perfectly in the mood, and it helped me mentally dive into my setting, what with the original book being set in 1898, not too far from my setting. I’m going to see it live on stage in Wembley in a few weeks with friends and cannot wait. It looks fantastic and I urge you all to try to at least get the album.

I also owe gratitude to a useful Microsoft Word add-in called Writespace that turns Word into one of those great distraction-free writing tools but retains the awesome dictionary and file format capabilities of Word. Great add-in!

So, for now, normal-ish blogging will resume. Wow.