What to do with my novel now?

So, I've written a novel. I have finally pulled my finger out and written a novel. I always said I would but I was never convinced that I'd actually get off my arse and do it - I am notoriously lazy.

But I did it, I wrote a damn novel. The question now is what to do with it.

Am I going to let anyone read it in its current form - belched out in a month, clumsy plotting, too many adjectives, adverbs, lapses in tense and so on and so forth? Something that concerns me is that the novel turned out much more autobiographical than I originally intended. It is, after all, easier to describe a relationship you once had than to filter your experiences and distill it into a fictional scenario, especially when time is of the essence. This is a double-edged sword: on the one hand, the novel might reveal a little more about myself to the friends I allow to read it than I am comfortable with; on the other hand, my best writing has always been the stories with strong autobiographical elements. That's not to say my novel is full of signposts - "This bit really happened! This bit is made up!" - but even so, I have written about difficult experiences that I'm not sure I want people to know in such detail. They wouldn't know which bits are real and which are made up but, still, people might start looking at me in that slightly nervous way people regard the mentally infirm.

Also, the central (and admittedly bizarre) plot device didn't really work too well but I had a bit of a brain wave when in bed on Monday night. I've had this idea knocking around my cranium for a long time but never thought of a way to utilise it in a story. It suddenly occurred to me that it would work well with the material in my NaNo novel. This would mean a complete overhaul of the entire plot so however it ends up, it will be substantially different from the first draft I have now.

So, I'm definitely going to do something with it but it can wait until the new year. I have tunes to write in December for the next issue of Mad Hatters. After a month of furiously writing prose, knocking some noise out will be a welcome relief.

Hmm, Writing Prose vs. Composing Music: that's an entire blog post in itself for another day.