One week ago today ended #NaNoWriMo2015. To those who won — Hurray! To those who wrote any new words on your WIP — Hurray!

I’ve participated seven times in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Each year during the month of October, I gear up and prepare for the writing marathon. Then, about mid-way through the month of November, I fall behind on my 1,700 words-per-day count and slink into a temporary depression. I sometimes cheat during this bleak time, just so I won’t dump too much emotion into a failure, but also, and more importantly, so I can focus once again on my story.

I didn’t reach 50,000 words on my WIP (Work in Progress), however, I certainly wrote over that word goal though the month…on other things. But I have a nice solid 25K of rough draft babbling to work with.

Today I’m to submit a fresh chapter of something to my critique group. A couple of days ago, after the collapsing break from the writing race, I once again picked up those raw words. In my mind, before looking at them, I thought those first six chapters were near perfection, but only a few days later: Oh, what a rough draft of babble.

I sat down for a three hour block to do some revisions on just the prologue and first chapter, and marked where I stopped and counted up my revised words: about 700. Seriously? I can pound off 700 words of babble in a third of that time! But that’s the trouble with revisions — it takes time and labor to get the words right, and to chuck out the worthless stuff. Or perhaps I just fell asleep at the keyboard. Somehow sleeping sounds better to me than spending three hours on 700 words of a novel revision.

Whatever your revision process is, don’t give up. Keep writing new. Keep improving what you’ve got. Don’t be afraid of the delete key. May the good words rule!