You completed NaNoWriMo and you have at least 50k words of rough draft. You’ve put it aside since then.
Now it’s time to edit and revise.
NaNoEdMo is National Novel Editing Month. It starts March 1. The idea between NaNoEdMo is that you spend the month of March editing your draft. Instead of counting words edited, the goal is to spend 50 hours revising your novel. It’s free to join here, and joining provides community benefits, including an active forum and lots of support with other writers revising and editing right along with you. There’s lots of advice and help as well as commiseration.
You can even get a certificate for completing your 50 hours. The rules are pretty simple. Basically:
You have to log your editing hours at least once every 7 days in March until you reach fifty hours. That is once between 1st-7th March inclusive, once between 8th-14th March inclusive, once between 15th- 21st March inclusive, once between 22nd-28th March inclusive and once between 29th-31st March inclusive; making a total of 5 times and totaling fifty hours or more. You can log your hours as much as you like but you must have at least one log in each period until you reach fifty hours.
They define editing as:
Editing is defined as changing previously written material. Editing does not include writing a completely new novel. It does not include planning or researching. It does include anything from correcting the grammar and spelling to substantial rewriting of the novel.
That means that your novel doesn’t have to be one that you wrote for NaNoWriMo. It also means that you can continue your 50K novel; keep in mind that 50K is a pretty slim novel by modern standards, so fleshing it out as part of editing is a reasonable idea.
