And We Have a Winner!

Yep. I made my NaNo goals. Not only did I write more than 50,000 words, I also covered my entire outline. In other words, I actually finished the book, ODE to Joy, in November.

Every book is a little different, and this proved to be no exception. I wrote the original outline (in a spreadsheet) while traveling in Mongolia. I had certain criteria it had to fit.

First, it had to include the Character named Flynn from the book Zackly Right, which I had written quite a few years ago. After going through some very intensive revisions, Zack is ready to market. If it doesn’t find a home in the New York publishing world, I’ll be self publishing it. I’m giving it a year in which to find a home. Zack has clearly set Flynn up for a sequel. ODE to Joy is supposed to be that sequel. I wrote it now because it will probably take a lot of revision, and I will need to have it ready to go out the chute whenever Zack is published.

Second, it had to be set at least part of the time in a place where Buddhist festival music – horns, drums, bells, and chanting – could be heard in the background of a cell phone call. This, also comes from Zack and is not flexible.

Third, after I decided Mongolia would work for the setting, one of my tour guides asked to be included in the book. So part of the book bounces in and out of a tour very much like the one I went on.

Originally I had intended to set the first part of the book in Tibet. If not that, then maybe Nepal. When I got the chance to go to Mongolia, I had envisioned dry wastelands. I although a part of me had hoped I might be able to do some research for this book there, my hopes weren’t high. I was elated with the first full day of the tour took us to a monastery where they were chanting with drums and cymbals.

By the time we left Mongolia, I already had the outline quite far along. I didn’t have the ending, but I already knew that had to take place in the US (also because of the sequel thing) and since it’s a Romance novel, it’s pretty obvious where it’s going. I planned on polishing it up well in advance of NaNo, but I got busy with a revision and didn’t get around to it. But I assumed it was far enough along not to be an issue.

Wrong. What a shock when I got to the end of the first chapter on the second day and discovered I was going to have to scrap the whole thing entirely and create a whole new outline. You can tell from my daily statistics the first few days were a bit wobbly. I wasn’t quite writing into the mist, but it was close.

So, while still trying to make the NaNo official daily minimum word count, I focused most of my attention on revising my outline. Again, I got it most of the way done, but left the ending off, and just rolled with it. You can really see where that happened. My daily word counts got much, much better. And you can see where the outline ran out, too. Pretty close to the ending. Again, a quick stop to fix it, and I was on a roll again.

My original plan was to finish the rough draft and roll right into the first revision while the story was still fresh in my mind, but like with most of my previous books, I’m in no mood to look at it again right now. And I really do need to give certain other books priority.

So now it’s time to regroup and decide what next.