It’s the last Warmup Wednesday of Nanowrimo 2022! As we crawl to the finish line, there isn’t a whole lot left to warm up for, and you probably have the methods that get you into the groove of your first draft pretty much down by now. So I want to use today to focus on what comes next. Let’s talk about the Now What? Months.

Now What? is a two-month program taking place in January and February where the blessed angels at Nanowrimo provide us with a series of resources and tools to hone your revision skills on your Nanowrimo novel. Whether you intend to publish or not, I’d strongly recommend taking a look at some of these resources. Revision is a very different beast than drafting, and particularly if you found yourself struggling this month, you may actually find you enjoy it. And if revision scares the pants off you, Now What? is a perfect opportunity to treat it as a learning experience and put that fear to rest. Either way, like Nanowrimo, you’re guaranteed to come out of it a much better writer than you went in.

But Now What? doesn’t start until January! So what should you be doing between now and then? Well, here’s my plan.

1. Take a damn break

No matter what your word count ended up at, Nanowrimo has been exhausting. You’ve probably been writing more frequently than you normally do by quite a lot – perhaps more than you ever have before. Your creative muscle is infinitely stronger now, but it’s also infinitely more tired. It’s time to give yourself a break.

When I say “break,” I don’t just mean a period of not writing. I mean a period of actively recharging your writerly batteries. You need to refill the tank if you want there to be anything in it by January. So read books! Binge shows and movies! Play games! I plan to do a lot of all of the above this month. Give the part of you that loves to tell stories a break, and the part of you that loves to hear them some time in the sun.

2. Do some introspection

I’m a firm believer that every story you write, whether you get one page into it or five hundred, and no matter what stage it ends up at, has an important place in your writing journey. Every single story has something to teach us about our craft, ourselves, and how to be an author.

But that doesn’t mean every single one was meant to be revised. I can’t tell you how many first drafts I’ve finished and then thought to myself, “Well, that’s enough of you,” and proceeded to never look at again. Your Nanowrimo novel might be one of these, or it might not. Before you dive into revising it, it might behoove you to do some thinking on this.

Close your first draft or lock it away in a drawer, and do your best not to look at it or think about it for at least two weeks. Then return to it, hopefully feeling at least slightly recharged, and think hard about whether this book seems to want to go the distance. If you have something else you’d like to revise more, plan on doing that instead, with no guilt whatsoever. But if your Nano novel comes out of that drawer itching to be worked on again, even after you’ve given it a rest, then it’s full steam ahead.

3. And now for something completely different

As December draws to a close and the Now What? months begin to peek around the corner at you, it’s time to start warming up in earnest. I plan to use the tail end of this little rest period to work on literally anything that is not the novel I’m going to revise.

I think working on lots of different kinds of projects is the best way to improve your craft as a writer, as well as the best way to reinforce with yourself that what you normally write is, in fact, what you should be writing. This is an important confidence boost to give yourself as you enter the daunting realm of revisions. For the last week or so of December, challenge yourself to work on something completely new and unusual. Freewrite a few hundred words from a prompt every day, or work on a short story you’ve had buried in the back of your brain for forever. Dabble in screenplays, comic strips, or game writing. Write the first chapter of that idea you had that’s in a totally unfamiliar genre.

This is another way of giving yourself a break without letting your writing muscles atrophy. You’ll probably find that as a result, you step into the new year with a reinforced or renewed sense of what kind of stories you want to tell, and exactly how to tell them.

Again, congratulations on making it to the end of National Novel Writing Month, no matter if you ended up with one word or all fifty thousand. I hope this month’s special programming was helpful and informative, and that even if you didn’t learn one drop of anything from me, you did learn something from the experiences you had trying to write a novel in a month. Starting next week I’ll be back to roughly one post a week, with a broader range of content including reviews and literary analysis.

Happy December, and Happy Writing!