I finished NaNoWriMo! I’m a winner! I feel really happy and accomplished and proud of myself and very happy. Look, I got a certificate and everything!

Of course, this doesn’t mean that the novel is finished. Far from it. I’ve mostly finished all the chapters, and mostly done it the way I planned. But this is just a rough draft. Currently, the sequel to Nemesis (the proper title of which will be decided at a later date) is a collection of loose scenes, it feels like. That’s not to say that there isn’t an ongoing story arc and red thread, but It feels very episodic, and there are bits missing to tie the story together. It’s also full of errors (not so much the spelling and grammar kind as the continuity kind), and it’s very bare bones; I’ve written dialogue and the bare minimum of necessary description, and the language is simple and direct.

Now comes the bit I like. Now comes the edit. I will read through everything that I’ve written, changing things as I go, fixing everything that doesn’t make sense, adding flourish to the language and detail to the settings, address the needs of characters who were overlooked (Chas needs more lines; Chas is funny). In the coming months, I’ll likely read through this thing a dozen times before I deem it worthy to even be seen by a beta reader.

A lot of authors hate the edit. I love it. Just writing was very stressful to me (and I didn’t quite manage to do it; I kept going back, adding bits and taking bits out of what I’d already written), it isn’t the way I usually work. I always edit while I write. Now I get to take this lumpy, crippled piece of fiction and polish it and turn it into art. This is the bit that I enjoy the most. This is the part of writing that I truly love. This is the fun part.