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Don’t leave your NaNo project hanging. You have everything it takes to finish that sucker already within you. Here are 3 quick tips to move you into the Finish Column. 

Just as we use scaffolding to construct buildings, we use specific writing devices, tools, and tricks to create fiction. However, as we must remove the braces and platforms before putting the home on the market, we must identify and remove these structural supports from our stories before submitting them. We need such tools to write the story, but leaving them lying about afterward–like a table saw in the middle of the living room–distracts the readers and gets in the way of their enjoyment of the story.

Here’s a list of common types of scaffolding writers use in their early drafts and how to revise them away:

You might think revising is a rough and rigorous ritual: a rigid writing desk, a ruthless red pen, a wrinkled brow, and seventeen cups of tea that regretfully go cold. You read and re-read the same wayward writing until the words wobble and warp, and no longer look like words at all.

But revising does not need to be dreadfully dull. A little silliness can shake loose the details your brain has stopped seeing and make you a sharper editor.

Editor’s note: It’s summer in the northern hemisphere, which means it’s time for double scoops of Rocky Road, trips to the beach, and endless hours locked in a darkened room trying to revise your November draft into something presentable. To celebrate the start of editing season, we’ll be filling the NaNo 2.0 blog with tips on revising and finishing a month-long manuscript. We’re excited to kick things off with this post from author Alan Lastufka, who reminds us where all those long hours of creative work can lead. Take it away, Alan!

Last fall, my small press, Shortwave, signed a worldwide sales and distribution deal with Simon & Schuster.

Last month, the NaNo 2.0 team participated in a “planning retreat” over a series of three days to think about what we wanted to accomplish in 2026, and how to realistically make those things happen. 

While we would have preferred to meet up in some sort of cozy writer’s cabin in the woods, we had to settle for a Zoom call, given the fact that we’re scattered all over the place and have full-time jobs. But for the purposes of this blog post, just imagine we made all of these decisions you’re about to read about in a place like this.

So! What was the outcome of the retreat? I’m so glad you asked.

We’ve emerged from our bat-infested winter slumbers, and our volunteer crew has officially kicked off work on site improvements for the fall. We’ll be posting about those efforts—and the community feedback that inspired them—soon!

In the meantime, we wanted to take a page from Laura’s book and share some things we loved, learned, and are still pondering from NaNo 2.0’s first year. (If you’re just tuning in, you might want to start with our origin story.)

After NaNo wrapped in December, we sent out a survey to everyone on our mailing list. Almost 200 folks took it, and the results were really illuminating. You can see the answers to the multiple choice questions below!

Here are a few things that stuck out to us:

It was October 1, 2025. Our inaugural Young Novelist Challenge page was published, the shiny new classroom resources were posted, and November was right around the corner. But were we ready?

The anticipation of our first Young Novelist Challenge felt a lot like the first time I told my students that they would be writing their own novels in November: what if the size of the challenge scared them away? What if they had no stories to tell? What if no one wrote anything?

Then I remembered how enthusiastically my students dove into writing their stories, crafting characters and plotting plots like they were born for the challenge. So I unclenched my jaw, released a deep breath, and trusted that we had done all that we could (in a very quick three months) to support teachers and young writers in the NaNoWriMo challenge.

Happy May, writer! It’s so great to see you again. 

The NaNo 2.0 volunteers and I spent the last four months hibernating in a cozy cave that Kristina found for cheap on Airbnb. I think one of the bats we shared the space with stole my eye mask, but it was otherwise a refreshing winter slumber.  

And now? Now we’re firing up the coffee urns, sweeping away the content cobwebs, and planning for our upcoming year of creative mayhem. We just had a big team retreat to prioritize all our plans, and we’re excited to share details here and in our newsletter this month. 

Like you, the NaNo 2.0 volunteers participated in November’s writing adventure. Are you curious as to what they accomplished? (And would you like to compare it to what they had originally planned? Hmmm?) I was, so I interviewed them to see how their November of writing abandon played out. Here’s what they had to say.