Aryn Ravenoak walked the walls of Alphaeon for the last time under a full moon.

This was the opening line for the novel I started writing on November 5, 2007 for National Novel Writing Month. I started another story on the first of the month, but 6800 words into it, I discovered that it wasn’t worth telling. So on day five, I started from scratch.

For those of you who aren’t aware, National Novel Writing Month is a yearly challenge for writers all over the globe to write 50,000 words of manuscript in 30 days. That amounts to about 1,667 words per day. Participants are encouraged to pound out a manuscript without editing, to leave their “inner editors” behind for one month while they focus on just finishing a first draft.

The good news is that I finished 50,000 words; so, technically, I won NaNoWriMo. But the bad news is that I haven’t finished the manuscript . . . nor do I intend to.

Although I ended up falling in love with my characters, I don’t feel that the story itself is worth telling without some major revisions that I don’t have the energy to make. It would be easier to start from scratch.

My current plan, now that I’ve gained a much greater appreciation for leaving my inner editor in the dust, is to finish up a manuscript that I’ve been working on for a couple of years. I’m already 54,800 words into the manuscript, and the story’s been begging to be told.

I have no choice. I have to tell it.