NaNoWriMo: Finished Hunting Snow

It’s over. Today I validated my word count at the NaNoWriMo site itself and the final count is 50,123 words.  My book is finished, and I feel a sense of relief and exhaustion.  Writing an entire novel in one month is certainly doable, but this one served to be quite a pain.  All I had planned for the book itself, quickly transformed into something else entirely.  I found that I couldn’t stay true to Snow White’s original fairy tale ending, not with what had happened to her and not with all the pain and suffering she’d endured.  Her choice in the end was her choice, and it was the one choice that no one could force upon her or take from her.  That is the whole point of this book in the end.  It explores Snow’s lack of agency, and how she has no control over what happens to her.  Others exert control over her, and so, I gave her a chance at the end to make her own decision about the rest of her life.

Her decision surprised me, and I found that I had to just let that be.  I couldn’t rewrite it to force upon the ending I had originally planned.  So instead I will put this novel in the finished drawer, let it sit a bit, and then I’ll pull it out and see if it’s revisable and worth publishing.

Until then I can rest for the next few days, glad to have completed my goal.  Not only 50,000 words in one month, but also another completed novel.  It’s been awhile since I’ve finished the novels I set out to write — last one I finished was four years ago, but today serves as a reminder that yes, I can still finish what I start. Now that this one is completed, I will work on finishing two other projects that I shelved for this month’s frenzy of writing. Once those are completed, I can set them aside and focus on revising this one.  The more completed novels I have, the more I can edit and submit to agents and/or publishers, and maybe one day, someday soon, one of those novels will be published.  That’s the second half of my dream and life goal for my writing. In the meantime, as I recover from this writing stint, I can work on my world-building again and maybe cleanse my palate with some poetry and short stories.