evilnymphstuff
So yesterday as I reached around 46,000+ words, I surprisingly typed:
THE END
And I still had at least 4000 words to write so as to reach the final 50,000 word goal for NaNoWriMo.
It’s the very first time that this is happening to me. A shortage of words instead of an overflow. What happened?
Anyone is in the same situation?
For me, I believe that I was too much in a hurry to finish the novel.
Last year, for NaNo, I had an awesome idea, and although I reached the 50k boundary, I never really finished the novel. Never typed ‘THE END’ and I haven’t yet revised it. (But since it’s still an awesome idea to me, I surely will one day!) This year, I wanted to get more serious about my writing and was eager to end the novel. I rushed to the end. And that’s why I finished too early.
So what do I do now?
Well, I’m going to keep on writing of course!
???
What I mean, is that, although my novel has reached its end, there’s still much more to tell, to add in between the lines. In fact, I had a plan, a detailed plot of the whole story in my writing copybook, and when I looked back at it after days of writing, I realised that I missed many little scenes and details that are indeed important to the novel!
How could I have missed them? Too eager to end… *sigh*
And I didn’t include the prologue in my wordcount because I wrote that before NaNo. So it means that there’s more to add, i.e. I can write another prologue, a second draft, let’s say.
Just look out for little things like this… and your wordcount will climb!
A writer’s imagination is unlimited after all. Keep on finding twists to put into your story. Keep on running for the NaNo finishing line!
Last thing:
“I always end up feeling like I need to write the end to write the beginning. And I don’t think it only applies to writing a novel.”
I posted this on An Evil Nymph’s Blog Facebook page and I wanted to put it here too in case some of you didn’t see it. And these words, I mean them. Someday I’d like to try writing the end of a story before the beginning, and from that, I’ll slowly build up the plot until page one. Because it is when I reached THE END that I finally understood all of my characters and the whole story and all… and then I looked back at the beginning… and I realised that I have a lot of editing to do.
Having a clear image of the end in mind helps in any domain. It’s called having specific goals. And from these, we can draw specific paths to go towards them. It’s like having a map. Isn’t it easier to reach your destination then?
What are your thoughts on all of this?
An Evil Nymph.
PS: Good luck one last time to all the participants of NaNoWriMo – the end is near! Don’t stop until Saturday at 00.00! Even though you’re far from reaching 50k words, don’t stop. Keep running. At least you’ve done it. And in the end we’ll all realise that we have more words written than what we had in October. 
Thus we all come out of November as winners! Yeah!!!
Related articles
- NaNoWriMo Tip #26: Don’t Beat Yourself Up (writingishardwork.com)
- NaNoWriMo Day 27 – Is There Anyone Who Wants To Lend Me Some Words? (allmeanssomething.wordpress.com)
- Here I Am Again (patgarciabookreviews.wordpress.com)
- NaNoWriMo Day # 26: When the Idea Fairy Strikes! (write-2-be.com)
- Do You Nanowrimo? (capitareafagiolo.wordpress.com)
