They can only read the thoughts you put down, carefully and with great love, on the page

IT'S OVER.  IT'S FINALLY OVER. 

I finished NaNoWriMo today.  By finished, I mean I wrote my 50,000th word, then wrote a few more to take me to the end of the scene I was in the middle of, then closed the document I've been working on all month with a massive sigh of relief.

It's been hard this year - really hard. And there is still plenty of work to be done. The story is nowhere near finished (except in my head) and it's full of holes where I skipped past bits which were too difficult or boring or scary to write. The parts I *did* write are full of spelling mistakes, cliches, strings of words which make no sense at all and clunky, cringe-inducing dialogue.  I'm going to have to do some serious editing before I'm happy to start showing it to people, and can't even begin to imagine how may re-writes it will take to turn what I have so far into something which could possibly be described as a novel.   I imagine very few of the 50,193 words I wrote this month will eventually make the final cut, but at least they're written down.  Which means, in NaNoWriMo terms, I have FINISHED.

As much as I love NaNoWriMo, I have to admit I'm glad it's over. Sacrificing quality for quantity has served a purpose this month, but I can't wait to start working at a slower pace again, and on a smaller scale.  Tinkering with stories - changing things, trying new ideas out, crafting and polishing sentences until they are just right - is one of my favourite parts of the  process.  It's sort of like a writer's version of pottering about in the garden shed, I suppose.  I've missed it.  I'm looking forward to mucking about with words again, and trying to get them right, safe in the knowledge that I can delete phrases and sentences - whole paragraphs even! - without having to worry about the detrimental effect on my word count. 

It will be nice to actually *like* something I've written again, too.  It has been a while.  I hate the fact that the few blog posts I have mananged to squeeze out in November have been rushed and error-filled and poorly constructed; my excuse is I've been wanting to get back to my NaNoWriMo story which is, of course, also rushed and error-filled and poorly constructed. (Is that irony? I'm too tired to tell.)

This comes from a  NaNoWriMo pep-talk penned by writer and McSweeny's founder Dave Eggers.  He's explaining what he loves about NaNoWriMo:

Knowing there are thousands of others out there trying to do the same, who are using this ridiculous deadline as cattle-prod and shame deterrent, means goddamnit, you better do it now because you know how to write, and you have fingers, and you have this one life, and during this one life, you should put your words down, and make your voice heard, and then let others hear your voice. And the only way any of that's going to happen is if you actually do it. People can't read the thoughts in your head. They can only read the thoughts you put down, carefully and with great love, on the page. So you have to do it, goddamnit. You have to do it, and you can step back and be happy. You can step back and relax. You can step back and feel something like pride.

He's quite right, of course (goddamnit). 

 Then of course you'll have to revise it ten or twenty times, but let's not talk about that yet.