Wordcraft -- NaNoWriMo is over. Or is it?

A page on the calendar turned, and another November of NaNoWriMo has come and gone. Or has it?

Did I write the great American novel? Not exactly. But I cranked out nearly 20,000 words, cheered on by the official site, http://nanowrimo.org/,with its cool dashboard badges (congratulations, you’ve started a novel, you’ve joined a local group, you’ve written 5,000 words, then 10,000).

And I’m glad to have helped the 12, 616 members of the Dallas/Fort Worth chapter add more than 31 million words to our books-in-the-making over the course of the past month.

It’s gratifying to belong to a movement that encompassed more than 9,000 writers each in Egypt and India as well as 175 in Trinidad and Tobago. Millions of people all writing in a single month on six continents stretching from Iceland to New Zealand. And although 2013 individual word counts topped out at about 51,000, in 2014, numerous writers pumped out more than 70,000 words each. Wow and congratulations!

But is it all over until next year?

No way. You can’t keep a good NaNoWriMo down. Now we have a chance to commit to not only writing a novel but revising it. Starting today, check out “now what?” under the Inspiration button on the NaNoWriMo site’s dashboard to say that, yes, we will keep these novels going. And be prepared to dig in again during January and February for revision boot camps.

Make the commitment to revise, attend webinars and compare editing notes (not to mention get introductions to agents and publishers) on Twitter, and check out NaNoWriMo blogs with advice on growing novels, editing them, finding agents, and more.

And, if your municipal liaison (ML) hasn’t already reminded you, as mine have, to save and back up your novel outside the NaNoWriMo site, please do so. (By the way, congratulations to Dallas-Fort Worth ML’s Robin A and Trelk, who each zipped past the 50,000 word NaNoWriMo goal!)

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This NaNoWriMo time of new beginnings made me realize I need to revise this blog as well. This month, I’ll conclude the Totally Texas portion of this blog. It was originally begun when my grandkids were very young and needed plenty of cool activities to grow their minds and bodies. Now they’re busy with school, music, and athletics, with less time or need for those field trips.

Although Totally Texas is leaving, Adventure classics and Wordcraft aren’t going away. Starting in January, I’ll blog weekly about Adventure classics, but only about one or two books monthly. I hope this will let me write more about each book, with time for ongoing conversations. With that in mind, see the updated Adventure classics page on this site with its tentative 2015 schedule. And yes, I’m open to suggestions.

Wordcraft continues as it has been. But to spread the posts more evenly throughout the week, Wordcraft will change to a Tuesday posting, Adventure classics to Friday.

Finally, as a thanks to the readers across the globe who’ve viewed this blog nearly 40,000 times since its start, I’ll be counting down on Wordcraft the most popular posts in each category, starting next week, as well as giving “where are they now” updates for frequently-sought viewer searches.