December Approacheth

With December around the corner, Saturday, and that marking the end of the epic 2012 National Novel Writing Month, I feel now is a good time to post what December will bring for me. I may post this on both blogs (so sorry if you follow both and try to see the new content only to find you read the same thing twice). This year has been a pretty epic year for me with nanowrimo because the novel I thought was one book turned out to be 2 so the end word count is going to be over 150k by the time I have the very rough first draft done. And most of it will have been written in November. Crazy sounding, I know.

So, after such a large word count and spending so long on the one novel, what happens next for me? The answer is a resounding: Edit!

*pauses for dramatic effect* or is it affect, bah, either, it's nanowrimo still and I don't care which is right. ;-) lol

Okay, now you can breathe a heavy sigh of relief. When I say edit, I don't mean I'm going to be editing the novel I may or may have not finished yet from NaNoWriMo 2012. In fact, I'm not even editing/rewriting the novels from 2011 or 2010 NaNoWriMo.

Nope, I'm going to edit a novel I started writing during NaNoWriMo 2007 since I've rewritten it before. Okay, that one might be a rewrite as opposed to an edit because I need to change it from present tense to past tense, but bleh, I'm calling it an edit because I'm not changing content really. I'm just changing from "he sees the new boy" to "he saw the new boy". Same stuff minor, time consuming change.

I'm also going to edit the novel I write 65k of during March in 2010. It hasn't had a heavy rewrite as the other one because the novel ended up at 90k and the main content I'm happy with enough that I'm going to not change much in what happens, just work on polishing it. I will be focusing on things like showing instead of telling (I am really bad at this), taking out some of the passive voice, and fixing minor details (like changing one of the minor character's names because I have a Michael and a Mitchel, tsk).

So, in an unofficial sense, December will be my novel editing month because the only reason I let myself start another new novel (I still have like 5 I'm in the middle of writing) was that all first drafts would be put aside as soon as November ended so I could devote time to editing.

I have to admit, I'm a bit nervous about this edit because it's a new stage for me. Even though I have been working on writing for about 7 years, I've edited for newspaper and for a small publisher, I have never done a full edit on one of my own novels. I've editing some scenes and short stories, edited chapters to submit for critique to a group, but I have not done a novel edit. Course, it took a while to get a novel that was not only rewritten but ready for edits and I kept starting new ones but that's besides the point. This marks a new stage because ideally, as soon as I'm done with edits I will have something I can have a reader check out. I won't send it to agents right away even though my dad thinks I'm stalling with this edit (*waves hi in case family members see this post*) but I will be a big step closer. A giant step even. Because soon as I've worked out the edits, had readers check it out, then do another pass after a minor break where I can work on finishing one of those already started novels, then I can try to submit to agents.

My goal is to have the query sent out some time in 2013, so I have my work cut out for me. I figure, if I can write 150k in a month of hectic mess, I can managed to spend a few months getting the edits on more prepared novels. And to be honest, I need a timeline. So, hmm... What the heck. I turn 29 near the end of August. Sounds like a good goal, 9 months from now in fact.

Now I have a timeline and a goal. I want to have at least one of the mutant novels ready to send out queries by my birthday. And now you all know and I will have to work hard to follow through on my goals. Yay for incentive!

So, that is my plan. And yes, I promise to also try and post a few times a month at least, because I do have more to say on writing and on my writing, so there will be more blog posts in the near future. And there will be book reviews done too because my new plan also includes putting together a weekly schedule and I'm putting in reading time on the list. I need to read and I shall, along with writing and editing. So much to do, I can't wait to start.

What are your plans for December 1st?
How did November go?