I did it!

Despite a major melt down, yesterday afternoon about 5pm I hit the big 50! - 50,000 words towards my novel in 29 days! Woo Hoo!!!

Heading to Missouri last Saturday I was sitting pretty at 40,000, with a personal goal of 1,000 words per day. Over the month, I've learned 1000 words takes between 1 to 2 1/2 hours of writing time, depending upon how difficult my characters decide to be. By trial and error, I've found I'm NOT a late night writer, but can write first thing in the morning, which worked extremely well while visiting family. As of yesterday morning, I had 47,028 words under my belt, leaving me with just under three thousand to meet the NaNoWriMo goal. It turned out to be one of those days where I had to fight for every single word, and I took a few major hits, but I came out the victor!


As for my novel, its no where near its completion; poor Felicity is still stuck mid-plot, struggling valiantly to extract herself from the hell I've created especially for her. My writing is mediocre, and I fear the plot is too derivative, and at this point I cringe at the thought of anybody reading it, especially family. But I keep reminding myself it's my first attempt at anything of this sort, and I've kept at it, despite fears, editorial rants, character disappearances, and simple ennui. I've stayed in the room and kept tapping at the keyboard.

NaNoWriMo has played a huge part in my personal success - Just updating my word count on my author page on their website was a fantastic incentive to get the work done. But the best was the bar graph breaking the word count into daily increments of 1667, comparing it to my personal progress. I was behind in the first week, and that graph encouraged me to catch up. In the third week, as I surged ahead in preparation for our travels, that graph goaded me into seeing just how much of a lead I could create. And when I finally hit 50,000 words, and validated my word count on their site - they gave me a Winner's page, complete with Winner Web badges - including the one above.

Now the challenge is how to continue on my own, without NaNoWriMo's assistance. This morning, Leah admitted that she also took up the NaNoWriMo challenge. She hadn't told me earlier for fear I'd be upset that she was 'copying' me. I'm ecstatic! She's finishing up her 50,000 words as we speak, but her story won't be complete either. So we're setting up write-ins (first one tomorrow at El Diablo) for us to both continue working! Yeah!