When I started NaNoWriMo this month, I merely hoped it would help me loved Traitors & Tyrants again. I figured that either I would learn to let it go, or I would fall in love. At the end of the first week, things looked promising but I wasn't quite there yet. It wasn't until week two that I truly realized that I had regained my love for this novel.
I didn't write everyday. I had moments when I wished I hadn't committed to the crazy, month-long adventure. It kept me busy. I couldn't read. I was a solid 5K behind multiple times. There were moments when I wanted to give up.
But I conquered NaNoWriMo. I revised part 1 of Traitors & Tyrants, bringing the first part of the novel to a whopping 50,588 words. I had originally hoped to revised the entire novel this November, but it only took me about three chapters (approximately 20,000 words), to realize that perhaps that wouldn't happen.
Now that the month is nearly over and I have time to breathe, I can't help but be grateful that I stuck with this novel throughout the entire month. It would have been easy to quite.
I would have regretted quitting. After all, who wants to ruin a 6 year winning streak? (It's now 7 years.) Doing the easy thing in life is almost a sure-fire way to regret something. Life isn't easy and it's not meant to be easy either. Anything worth having is worth working for. Traitors & Tyrants is worth the work.
Looking back, I'm glad that I didn't tackle part 2 during NaNoWriMo. I knew exactly what to do with part 1 and, while I mostly know what to do with part 2, there are still some big questions I have to answer for myself while I work on the second half of Traitors & Tyrants. Part 2 needs to be revised at a slower pace and I'm okay with that. Part 1 looks incredibly better and has really upped the novel's game.
I'm looking forward to taking a break, but I'm also looking forward to completing revisions for part two. The writing process is a wonderful, fickle thing.
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