Dear Post-NaNoWri-Mo Sheryl,
You didn’t complete a rewrite that came out to 50,000 words. You didn’t “win” NaNoWriMo. And that’s okay. You did complete over 25,000 words, which is still quite a lot. You got sidetracked by someone opening to submissions, requiring you to rewrite a short story to fit it. You also got ideas for two new stories and were making notes for them. And when you are getting down on yourself, remember that your day job blew up in an unexpected emergency, and you adopted three adorable kittens.
This is not a failure. It was a learning experience. You now know what your limits are. You know how many balls you can juggle at once. You know that you can back away if you have to.
So what do you do next? Keep plugging away at the rewrite. Your new goal is to have the complete story done by the end of January. Then you can lock it down and do a careful edit of it. Also start cleaning up the other stories you are working on. Start doing research about where you can submit your novel, and the other short stories.
Love,
Rest-Of-The-Year Sheryl
PS – you can adopt your adorable friend like Sherbert up there at the Humane Society Silicon Valley. Dogs, cats, and pocket pets! They have the cute!