Can you write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days?

Looking for something to do with your NaNoWriMo novel? What about that novel you wrote years ago that’s just been taking up space in a drawer?

The Amazon 2012 Breakthrough Novel Award Contest (good grief, what a redundant name) is now open for entries! This contest is free to enter and open to adult and YA, unpublished and self-published novels. The deadline to enter is midnight on February 5th, though they only take the first 5,000 entrants in each category so you’ll want to get your entry in as soon as possible to make sure that you don’t miss out. The prize is not only a large cash advance but a publishing deal with Penguin so it’s a great opportunity to get your book in front of a variety of editors and publishers.

If you decide to enter, let us know below so we can keep our fingers crossed for you!

Image via Wikipedia

I promised everyone in my NaNoWriMo area that I’d take requests if there was a topic they wanted a blog post about. So, one intrepid Wrimo asked:

Adjusting to life after NaNo is HARD. I’ll have to remember this icky feeling I’ve had all December for next year…the whole “not writing because I’m trying to get holiday stuff done and I deserve to relax, but it’s all making me feel miserable and unproductive” lethargy and just keep writing come December.

So here we are. Because we’ve all been there. NaNoWriMo can be stressful and annoying while your in it but once it’s over… you kind of miss it no matter how badly you need a break. And then you crash land in the middle of the holiday season so you simply trade one kind of stress for another. It’s a relief to not be writing while you’re running around buying presents, decorating and doing the usual holiday stuff but, at the same time, not having the time to write at all gives you this feeling of failure after spending 30 days living and dying by the word count. And if you don’t write a single word all December, you do feel like a word-less failure when the dust settles in January.

The simplest cure for a NaNoWriMo hangover is hair of the dog. Whenever you can eek out time, do some writing. Ideally you want to keep working on your NaNo novel in progress but, really, any writing will do to keep your creatives juices lubricated. Blog posts, diary entries, stream of consciousness journals from the perspective of one of your characters… write anything at all, especially if you can do a little bit each day. A little bit is always better than nothing.

While stolen moments of writing may be all you can afford during a busy time like the holiday season once you settle back into “ordinary time” you should set yourself a writing goal. Do you want to set a date deadline to finish the novel by or just an overall word count goal per day, week or month? That’s up to you and your writing goals. But having a NaNoWriMo like goal to keep you productive and focused will help to chase away the NaNo blues. You may not accomplish as much in the ordinary time as you did during National Novel Writing Month but forming consistent writing habits is the best thing that you can do for yourself as a writer.

But that’s just my advice. I’m hoping other writers and NaNoWriMo veterans will weigh in with their advice to combat Post NaNoWriMo Letdown Syndrome.

You’ve just finished a novel. Maybe you wrote it as part of November’s National Novel Writing Month. Either way, you’ve got this first draft happily sitting there and you’re wondering… what happens next?

First, you let it sit. Then you go over it with the proverbial fine tooth comb, cleaning and fine-tuning it. Then you give it to your critique groups  and beta readers and get some outside perspectives. Then you repeat those last two steps again and again until you’re absolutely positive that the book you have is as good as it can possibly be.

Now comes the part that’s really just between you and your book. For some people, this can be the hardest part of the entire process. You need to step back entirely from your book and take an objective look at it to decide its future.

Why did you write this book in the first place? Was it just for fun or for the experience? Did you write it with the aim of getting an agent and a publisher down the road?

You’ve been up close and personal with the book for a while now and you’ve gotten heaps of outside perspectives in it. It’s time to ask yourself whether your original plan is what you still want.

After all this work, have you decided that your book is good enough to try to publish after all? Or have you realized that this isn’t the book to launch your career and that you’d be better off turning your focus to the next one? Has the feedback from your readers made you realize you’ve got something with a limited niche audience that wouldn’t be suited for a big publisher but might be ideal for self-publishing?

Once you ask yourself these questions, you’ll need to help yourself find the answers through research. This means researching agents, publishers and the whole query process. This process is slow and maddening but the rewards can be great.

Self-publishers have just as much work to do if not more. Sure, you can just slap your book up and have it for sale in under a week but that doesn’t mean that’s the way that you should do it. Successful self-publishing experiences come from careful planning and from treating the process of publishing your book with as much care as launching a new business.

I can’t tell you whether traditional publishing or self-publishing is for you. I had a successful self-published book that was picked up in a traditional deal. I’m also only looking into traditional outlets for my latest novel at this time. Do with this info what you will.

But no matter which option you choose, you’ll have to conquer a certainly amount of fear. The fear of rejection, fear of failure, and sometimes even the fear of success can all hold our finger back from submitting our books anywhere. My hope is that after you’ve put all this work into working on your book you’ll have enough faith in it and yourself to make it happen.