I Published My NaNo Novel: Ponder Before You Print!

If your New Year’s resolution is to publish your NaNo novel, you’re in luck—because there are plenty of routes for traditional or self publishing. But don’t rush to get your novel on the shelves! Today, author and participant Rebecca Milton shares some tips to consider before you press “publish” on your masterpiece:

When it comes, that flutter of belief—the faint hope that you might, in fact, have written something good enough to publish—spreads like a wildfire. Once you think it, you cannot cast the thought away: it will eat at you, no matter how nervous you are, no matter how little you think of your writing. You have written something that is worthy; that thought is more precious than you will ever be able to explain.

It took me many years to get this feeling—and when it came, I couldn’t look away from it. Even as it warred with my own self-doubt, my lack of self-esteem for both my writing and myself, I embraced this precious thought and barely dared to speak of it. And it grew, and grew, and a year and a half later I gave it what it wanted: I published my novel.

I wrote Mundane Magic over two years of NaNoWriMo to close in on its final word count, but that was only the beginning. The journey to publishing was long, hard work, and it is the best thing I have ever done in my life. Along that road I learned a lot of things, and if I were to pick just one of them to tell you, it would be this: don’t rush into it.

The thing with self-publishing is that while not always simple, it’s exceptionally accessible. You can do it in a matter of moments: upload finished novel to Kindle Direct, hit publish, done. In a post-NaNoWriMo flurry of enthusiasm, it might be easy to do so, especially with all of the promotions floating around. Half an hour of your time and you can call yourself a published novelist!

“To my astonishment, the further I got along the road, the clearer it became that the actual ‘novel writing’ was only a small part of the process.”

But your book is priceless. That feeling you have, that belief, is precious. Your book is worth so much more than an impulsive upload of an unedited, unprepared, cover-made-in-Paint version. Take your time. Don’t fear losing your enthusiasm, because once you have that self-belief it will eat away at you until you sate it. It won’t abandon you.

To publish Mundane Magic, I spent months researching all of the self-publishing options; when I picked my method, it was an informed choice. There are so many options out there, there’s surely one that’s perfect for you and your book. Do your research and find it.

The next best thing I did for my novel was have it edited. My editor Louise took my novel and transformed it into something as close to perfect as it could be. Not only that, but from her edits I’ve learned what to stop myself doing in the future—so my next novel(s) will also benefit from her insight.

And to my astonishment, the further I got along the road, the clearer it became that the actual “novel writing” was only a small part of the process. All told, I spent far more time preparing the book for publication than I did writing it—even though I went through two years of NaNo and months of revisions. This was the most jarring lesson. You’d think writing would be the focus of writing!

But the thing to remember is that all of these things you will end up doing—research, editing, designing, typesetting, marketing—are all to support your writing. They all exist to do justice to the words that you slaved over for months or even years. Everything that you do is for the benefit of your novel.

It’s stressful. It’s hard. It’s a long road that requires you to become a dozen people all at once. And if you’ve got that spark of feeling, that precious belief and love—you should do it.

Rebecca Milton is an author who grew up hiding in stories to escape the world - only to find she wanted to give them back. This year she self-published her debut novel Mundane Magic , a magical realism story about what it means to be special. She also has a blog where she publishes poetry, flash fiction and short stories as well as blogging about writing, self-publishing and mental health. She lives in the southeast United Kingdom with her fiancé and their several hundred books.

Top image licensed under Creative Commons from Tristan Schmurr on Flickr.