NaNoWriMo Wrap-Up

You know, I love how there's a looooong list of blog posts in the sidebar on the last day of a month, and the next day, it's back to teeny-tiny again. New months are fun.

Anyway! At about 11:30 PM on November 26th, during an online word war with my Austin NaNoWriMo buddies, I typed my 50,000th word.

The overly-large grin that crossed my face at that moment was comparable to finishing my first marathon, or watching my brother get married, or seeing my husband graduate from college. I stopped writing-- just for a second-- to go back to the chat page and type "50K!!" (thus messing up everybody else's word war, since they stopped writing to offer congratulations). I don't expect to get that level of exhilaration and happiness from 50K words on any future NaNos, now that I know I can do it. Because going into this, I didn't "know". I've been looking at the "verify & win" link on the NaNoWriMo page since early October when I signed up, wondering if I'd ever get to follow that link and put in my novel.

And I am here to say that I did, on November 27th (I wanted to keep looking at my green word count bar for a while before I made it official). In fact, I started writing this blog post before verifying, so I'm making it official riiiiiight... now! (Wow, that was kind of like time travel, wasn't it?)

Here's what the winner's page looks like:


The head office of NaNoWriMo also recorded a very friendly video of the staff cheering for the winners, which was posted on the winner page. It made me smile. Again.

And while I'm at it, here's what my stat page looked like after I updated my word count in the wee hours on the 27th. See the shiny green bar?

Was it worth it? Absolutely.

Will I do it again? You bet.

Is my novel finished? Are you kidding? Of course it isn't finished. It's nowhere near finished. Part of my December plan is to finish it, kinda. And then I'm going to re-write it, because I've decided to take the plot in a completely different direction, but since I made this decision in mid-November, any attempt to begin a re-write at that point would have resulted in 1) Not winning NaNo, and 2) A nervous breakdown. So, I shall outline, I shall plot, I shall write, I shall take these 50K + words and force them to make sense to people who aren't me.

And then it goes in a (figurative) drawer for a couple of months before I begin revision.

Meanwhile, I have an idea for my next novel, and I am looking forward to starting it as soon as I'm done with this one. Look out, world; I am a WRITER!