It’s all ready, and Well done!

I just have to hit the buttons, release the files, and Broken Promises will be available for sale.

You know, even after 8 years and 7 books, release days still give me a thrill. There’s still that buzz of nerves and excitement.

Elsewhere, around the world, people are finding the last few words to reach 50,000 and declaring themselves Winners of NaNoWriMo. Well done to each and every one of you. That’s one hell of an achievement. Some of you will carry on writing, some will offer your books for sale at some stage, and some will bask in the brief glow and then go back to the day job. But you all wrote a 50,000 word novel.

Wow.

Broken Promises began life as a NaNo novel, back in 2006, and I hated it once the month was over. I shoved the manuscript in a folder on my old computer and it only got saved by accident when I bulk copied every file from the hard disc to sort out later as the old computer threatened to die and take all my work with it. The blue screen of death was menacing my Portal people!

Thankfully Broken Promises escaped that catastrophe and languished on a USB flash drive for years until I dug it out to0 see if anything could be salvaged.

The moral of the story? If you hate your NaNo novel, or any of your writing, don’t throw it away, don’t delete it. You may, one day, come back to it with fresh eyes and think it’s not as bad as you thought. There may even be a gem hidden there, waiting for an editor to find and polish with you.

If you’ve won NaNo already: Well done!

If you’re still writing: Well Done, you still have a few days, race for the finish line!

If you tried and gave up, or have little or no hope of finding that total of 50,000 words: Well done! You tried, you wrote, you started something. There’s always next year.