When I finished the actual 50,000-word, I expected something to happen.
And it didn’t.
I wanted to see fireworks.
I thought it would be this unbelievable feeling.
I thought I would be elated, like I was walking on air; but I looked that that word count and thought boy this story has so much longer to go.
Keep this in mind in the final week.
1) You’re not producing a final draft, you’re producing a first draft. Just write like a madman/madwoman and forget all else. Don’t worry about being done, just worry about writing.
2) You may not be finished when you’re done. I know I’ve said this throughout, but I feel like the most important benefit of NaNoWriMo isn’t the finished manuscript; it’s the writing habit you’ve established in a month of novel-writing.
The best gift you get from NaNoWriMo is the gift of a different YOU.
3) Don’t be afraid to take time to jot down new ideas. Personally, I wouldn’t work on any new ideas until this one is finished, but I did get a slew of new concepts for novels, short stories and nonfiction while I was coming to the end here.
Now that I’ve been writing at least 1700 words for the last month, I know that I can make those projects a reality. I know that I’ve done it for the joy of it, and Stephen King says in the final line of On Writing, if you can do it for the joy, you can do ti forever.
I don’t know what this will be on December 1, but I know the person that started writing every day for writing’s sake isn’t the same person as he was on October 31. Keep writing and you’ll change. You’ve always been a writer, but now you’re formalizing it.