What to Do While Your Nano Novel “Rests”

by Kelsie Engen

Many first time writers will finish a first draft and then immediately dive into revisions. It’s sometimes difficult to convince them that this is exactly the wrong thing to do. After all, we want to keep the momentum going right? So we immediately set to work on the edits, pounding away on the keyboard until our fingers are as bloody as our red pen. And pretty soon, we’re sick to death of our novel and we can’t bear to look at it.

So we set it aside and can’t bear to look upon it for months. And then we don’t get our books finished–because we hate them.