NaNoWriMo Approacheth

NaNoWriMo begins in three months' time. I've failed to edit and prepare my manuscript to submit for a free proof copy, so I have to win again this year if I want another shot at it. It's times like this I feel low, like someone who quite simply can't get the important tasks done. I had eight months to get my manuscript in order and I barely touched it. I had the opportunity to get a free hard copy of my work and I squandered it.

As I've said before, the editing and revising process is far more daunting to me right now than the writing process. I'm not really intimidated by NaNoWriMo any more, but the idea of editing a 50,000 word manuscript is enough to make me hide under the bed. NaNo has taught me a lot about myself as a writer, and I feel as if the format of the contest is not conducive to good writing for me. Editing while writing is not a good plan, but the pace of NaNo is such that there's no room to pause every few chapters or the equivalent and look over the work, tweak it, just make sure it's not completely insane.

NaNoWriMo is fun, if maddening, but at the end of it I have a huge work that I don't even want to think about untangling. Having an outline at the start of NaNo may help. I may try that this year, to build a road map of the story that will help keep it from becoming an unwieldy mess.