NaNo Wrap Up

Actually it was 19 days and 50070 words!

I just wanted to share with you this momentous occasion: I finally won NaNoWriMo.  This is something I've always wanted to do (for years and years!) but always backed away from the last second because "November is buuuusy :'(", or "I work too much, I don't wanna come home and write a novel >:(" or .  It's not that hard to start something but it's incredibly hard to see it through to completion (the three dozen stories I've started and promptly abandoned will attest to that).  I'm always completely gung ho, guns blazing the first week then by the third week I'm procrastinating by playing solitaire, arguing on the internet and watching documentaries on Netflix with names like "The Fascinating Sheep of New Zealand".
 
I am exhausted.  But if NaNo is something you've ever thought of doing, even just in the back of your head, I highly encourage it.  I cannot encourage it enough, actually.  There's just something that makes you feel all warm and glowy inside when you sit back and look at that final word on the last page and go "I did all that".  It's a lot of work and you're going to be inconvenienced and there will be days you will absolutely think to yourself "who cares if I write, nobody will ever see this anyway", but if you push through all that and persist in staying true to your goal you'll find the end result is well worth it.

I just hit 50,000 words earlier this morning, after pushing myself and pushing myself (and the sad part is, I didn't even finish my story.  There's still way more to tell and wrap up.)  But that's okay!  Right now, it's time to celebrate the fact that I did in 19 days (I took off weekends, Thanksgiving and Black Friday) what many people never do in their entire lives.  Yes, the novel is a big steaming pile of crap.  Yes it might possibly be the worst thing ever written.  But the point is, it was written at all.  Woohoo!  I can now officially cross something off my bucket list.  Now all that's left is to revise, edit, revise edit, revise edit and edit some more.

Wait, did I mention editing?