Writing update

Welcome back to my writing updates!! As you might know, I participated in Camp NaNoWriMo this month. I took part in NaNo during November and wrote an astounding 52K words.

Nope, no joke. It was crazy and I loved every minute of it! The goal was 50K and I surpassed it by 2K…I could have done more but I had some days off from writing. I will admit that I never thought I could actually write a book but here I sit…a first draft complete! I set out this month with a goal of writing 10K words for April. Well, you guessed it, I surpassed this goal as well. I wrote a total of 18,627!!

That isn’t even the craziest part. Are you all ready for it?!?! I only wrote for a total of 6 days! I like to take every Suunday during NaNo and head to my local Barnes & Noble for the day. I usually write between 5K and 8K words for the day there. Three days were spent writing at home and three were spent at Barnes & Noble. I love those days where I can sit and just write, let the words flow to the page…well, in this case, the keyboard.

I do hope to start editing my novel but I want to let a little bit of time pass before I dive into it again. I have six red pens patiently waiting to tear it apart. I think what I will do for the first draft is to print it all out and staple each chapter together. Then I can easily edit the novel in chunks. Right now it feels awful…like a large pile of trash. I know there are good bones there and it just needs a lot of work. That being said, I am really excited to actually dig in and tear this thing apart.

Did I celebrate? I did celebrate, kind of. I ate some junk food…oh and I felt terrible afterward though, I really need to kick my own butt and get back into Keto.  I also bought hardcover copies of Nevernight and Godsgrave as well as Descendant of the Crane because I loved that book so much. I also bought three books that will be used to help me further my spiritual journey into paganism and witchcraft. On that point…I am really excited things are finally falling together. Back to my book…

Will I publish traditionally or self-publish? That is the big question, isn’t it? Well, let me edit this darn thing first and see if I still think it is a piece of trash. Just kidding, I really don’t hate this book. I actually love the characters. The one who was meant to be my antagonist I actually fell in love with. She is so badass…excuse my language. The more time I spend in the story, the more I fall in love with some aspects of it. Back to the original question…I don’t want to limit myself to just one avenue of publishing. I think I’ll query at some point but who knows! There is a lot of work yet to be done on my newest baby.

I wanted to explain how it felt to type those last words ‘The End‘ but I can’t explain it. At least once every day I tell someone that I finished my first draft. I am super happy and proud, did I mention that? I am so proud that I chose to stick with this and push through. so…

I finished the first draft of my debut novel!!

P.S. If anyone has questions or would like to know a little bit more information, get in touch with me. I wanted to write more in this post but it would mainly be me gushing about how excited I am.

What did you feel like finishing your first draft of your debut novel? Do you still feel the same excitement when you finish a new book now? Tell me all about how you celebrated finishing your first novel!