50,228 Words

That, I am proud to say, was my word count for November, though the word verification on the site only gave me 50,051. After years of feeble efforts and failure, I finally beat NaNoWriMo. I had a strong start (4500 words on day one) and then started to fall behind at the halfway point, but I managed to hit 50,000 a day early after a staggering (for me) 12,000 words in 3 days.

NaNoWriMo proved something to me that I thought was impossible. Not that I could write 50,000 words in a month--I knew that was something I could do, it was just incredibly unlikely. Rather, it proved that I could find the time to write 50,000 words in a month without sacrificing everything else. I certainly made more time for writing than ever before, but it's not like I had to become a shut-in to do so. Having completed NaNoWriMo makes the idea of finishing the novel seem like a much less daunting process.

But that's where the self-congratulations end, because since December started, I haven't upped that word count at all. I'm not sure if it's because there's no longer a community for encouragement or competition, or if it's simply that I'm not sure what to do next, but despite defeating NaNoWriMo, this draft is only about 60% completed. And after that comes the editing process.

One of the dangers of NaNoWriMo is that it allows you to get a little too caught up in your achievement, and you forget how much more work is left to be done. I'm getting back to work on the novel, albeit at a much slower pace--if I can have the first draft done by the end of February, I think I'll be doing okay. But who knows? Those 4000 word days were kind of fun, in a psychotic sort of way.