=]

Ps – thinking of doing a part Nano myself. 1K a day. See what happens.

I know the start of this novel which was written during the last NaNoWriMo will need a lot of work. But my second drafts have always tended to be a rewriting of the first draft anyway – I am not like Stephen King who gives the impression from his book "On Writing" that his second drafts are just edits of his first drafts. Mine are near total rewrites of much the same plot and much the same characters, but in different words.

You may have a point with rushing the end though, I find that the only good thing about taking so long to write my first drafts is that I have a lot of time to think about them and ensure that the plot is solid and the characters are consistent.

I will see what happens. In my rush to the end, I might miss obvious plot problems and new characters might turn out to be hermaphrodites(I can't believe I spelt that correctly the first time I typed it either). I do plan to introduce new characters very shortly in another group of aliens so they might actually be hermaphrodites anyway.

I know how I want my novel to finish and how it should get there, but my characters always seem to want to take a different route from the one I have mapped out for them.

What does Nano mean anyway, but a reason to discipline yourself. You can do whatever you want.
Perhaps your novel is really two novels, or a one story over two books. It's what I did for my YA series. All up about 175K.

Go where the spirit takes you. But this is your big novel. You don't want to rush the end.

I've opted not to do Nano again, though I can see its benefits. The rewriting took too long. It was far too rushed and probably did the two novels a disservice. A short term hit, but long term pain.