During November, "pep talk" emails are periodically sent out to Wrimos. Published authors wrote these pep talks, which was pretty cool. The post-NaNo one was written by Kelley Armstrong (whom, I must admit, I hadn't heard of), author of several fantasy novels. She had this to say to us unpublishing Wrimo winners:
What NaNoWriMo gave me was a quick and dirty first draft, and by the end of it, I could see that my book had some good stuff... and it had some serious problems and missed opportunities. ... If a multi-published author can’t expect to turn out a publishable first draft during NaNoWriMo, then neither should you. ... It’s a rare writer who publishes the first book they wrote — I didn’t — so practice is invaluable.
The "missed opportunities" part is so true! I am braving the waters of letting other Wrimos critique my steaming pile of— er, I mean, my rough draft. Just writing the synopsis for my story, I realized "omg, I should have done that to the character!" or "d'oh, of course I need to include this!" That's what revising is for, eh?
2 comments:
So when do we, the readers of this blog, your best friends and good buddies, get to see the draft, hmmm?
Enquiring commenters want to know.
My best friends and good buddies get to see revised drafts, not the horrible mess of this first draft. :)
Random strangers telling me my story sucks, I can listen to and not be too hurt by. Friends telling me it sucks... That would be more difficult to handle. So I want to at least have one revision between this draft and the one I give to people I actually know.
I want to show friends something I'm proud of for more than it's word count, y'know? :)
But that revised draft should be coming along as I get feedback from my alpha readers. NaNoEdMo is in March... In the meantime, it's world-building and plot-hole–filling for me.
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