Yesterday, I reached the end of my outline. I wrote 'The End' and called it a night, with only 1822 new words. I became… depressed. I know I have plot holes, since the outline shifted a bit during the writing, and my word count isn't where I wanted it to be. True, I didn't think I'd hit 50,000 words, but once I did, I planned for 85,000 words this month.
I just ran out of plot.
I think I'm feeling down because I really expected to go all out all month, and now I'm done early, and I can't do that. I'm not sure. Anyway, I'll write up notes on where I know I made mistakes, and maybe what I should do to fix them, and then I'll put the manuscript in a drawer for a couple of months to give myself some separation. After that, back at it with heavy duty revisions. Maybe actually turn this pile of mess into something readable!
NaNoWriMo has been a sort of epiphany for me. Yes, I got serious about my writing about three years ago, and yes, I did a lot of work in that time. But Nano showed me how much work I could actually do, and the quality really isn't that bad for a first draft. My total for the month then is 69,419 words in 24 days. And I'm really happy about that.
Now, with Nano out of the way, I need to set my sights on my next project. I'm not sure if I'll return to Anshi right away, but we'll see.
I do have some software in mind, but I'm worried that going back to writing software will hurt my writing. Although both are creative, programming is creative in an entirely different way than writing, and I don't want to mess up at this point.