Participating in NaNoWriMo, as I’ve mentioned before, has been a good way to start the work of a new book and get it completely down in what I call a NaNo draft. The NaNo draft is really just a starting point to get to the Dirty Draft. Fifty thousand words just isn’t enough for the epic fantasy novel.
This year it looked like my day job was going to prevent me from participating in NaNoWriMo, so I made alternate plans to do what I could in November, mostly research and editing. However, this week brought a change in the day job’s schedule. It now appears I may actually have more time than I thought. There still won’t be enough time to do a new novel in November but I am going to add fifty thousand words to last year’s NaNo project. The novel needs it. Despite doing NaNo prep in October, I always spend a bunch of NANo time filling in plot holes, developing missing characters, or character arcs. By using last year’s book I have already done the majority of those things and I should be able to just write the book.
Writers who work at other jobs have to be flexible and always seek the best use of the time they have for their writing. We can’t worry too much about the rules of how to get the writing done, we have to find the ways which work for us.
Kevin J. Fellows 