Crossing The Finish Line

I am tired. But I am victorious. And then some.

After a month of writing as much as I could for as long as I could, November is over and I have crossed the finish line with a final word count of 57,982 words.

I have walked away from NaNoWriMo with a few amazing things.

I have written two complete, and probably horrible, short stories that need tremendous editing.
LK has been renamed OK (or rather, The Lost Key has been renamed The Order of the Key) and has been sliced down into three books – because writing as much of it as I did (it was my main focus throughout this month) meant that I was forced to face the fact that this storyline was much bigger than the space I had allotted myself.
I have added 5 new chapters to OK and a chapter and a half each to LI and DG, which is a tremendous amount of progress.

Just a couple of points I wanted to discuss regarding NaNoWriMo:

While what you produce in this process is unedited and likely unpublishable (clearly, not a word) at this point, this raw form of your story is a great way to work through problems in your tale and iron out funky plot wrinkles. At one point, I wrote a chapter to add in between two chapters I had written because I realized I needed a little more action at that portion of the story. By the time I was done with what I was writing for OK, I realized I had missed an explanation earlier on, and jotted it down on my list of things to go back and fix.
50,000 was not as many words as I would have thought. And 1,670 a day was even less. By the end, I was blowing through that in a day. Like a muscle, your writer’s brain can be built through exercise.
A person can’t write like this all the time, but I have made a commitment to myself. I found this process so inspiring and motivating, that I decided my own self-imposed NaNoWriMo was the way to go. So, December I give myself a break. And then January, I’m trying this again. For myself. Just because. If I could write this much in one month, I can finish my work faster – I just have to force myself to put the pedal to the metal!

Check out my totals below:

Story Key:

Short Stories: OH, C2SS
Novel Length Urban Fantasy: OK
Novel Length Romantic Comedy: LI
Novel Length Space Opera: DG

11/26: 1227 words of OK – This was the day I won NaNo!!! I wasn’t feeling very well and had a late day out, but I managed to cross the finish line!

11/27: 1084 words of DG, 528 words of LI, 1006 words of OK – 2618

11/28: 1093 words of OK, 1570 words of LI – 2663

11/29: 420 words of LI, 1729 words of OK = 2419

Lastly, before this blog returns to its regularly scheduled insanity, I would like to thank my readers for the support, encouragement, and conversation you gave me throughout this process. This was fun, but a little jarring at times, and I wouldn’t have made it through had I not had such a great online community.

Thank you, and I will be back next week with a look at Perception vs. Reality in the world of writing.