Farewell, NaNoWriMo 2011

I am glad I won this year, but I sure am sad to see NaNoWriMo go.  We'll probably be having at least one TGIO (thank God it's over) party or meeting in the coming week or two, but I'm not really glad it's over — I loved how it kept me motivated throughout the month.  I don't know if I necessarily want or need to be writing 2,000 words or more every day on a regular basis, but it did get the job done.

Which reminds me — not only did I finish NaNoWriMo (i.e., got to 50k), but I also finished the novel (more or less).  I wrote 1,283 words Tuesday night and put an ending on it — not several thousand like I'd been hoping for, so I may actually complete the first draft just shy of 80k, but I can always expand later if it needs it.  I have one more scene to write — something I skipped over a few weeks ago, when I wasn't sure what to write, so I just skipped it and kept going — and last night I added 582 words of that scene.  Unfortunately, that was after midnight, so my final NaNo count stayed at 53,557.

Today I'll finish the skipped scene — perhaps a few hundred more words — and then I'll set the novel aside for a little while before I start revisions.  On the question of whether to start Book 2 right away, I've realized that I need to do a little more research anyway, since I'm going to be including some real events in the story, so I'm going to start on that next.

My husband had a good point: If I start on Book 2 before I start revisions of Book 1, I may realize where I want or need to make changes in the first book to make the story flow better, or to make something in Book 2 work better.  So I think, once I am done with the research, I will start writing Book 2, and see where it's going before I go back and make revisions on the first one.  I'm planning to start revisions sometime in January.

The good news is, if all goes well, I may be releasing Ruby Ransome and Pandora's Box sometime in the spring or early summer — if I stick with my original plan of self-publishing, of course, but at the moment I don't foresee that changing, since I want control over my own book covers (because of the 1920s images) and book promotion.

I'd love to hear from others.  How did NaNoWriMo go for you?  And do you have any plans to publish?