NaNoWriMo: Final Thoughts

Okay, so last night's post came to you from a state of exhausted euphoria. For one thing, I was up way past my bedtime (I'm an early riser, and so I go to bed pretty early, too). For another, I'd been writing for about 16 straight hours. As much as I love writing (it's an every-fiber-of-my-being kind of love) it's hard work. I have to put all of myself into my writing (how else would it be any good?), and putting all of yourself into anything is exhausting. Especially since I've been doing it all month.

So, with a little more reserve than I used yesterday, I am happy to say that I am officially a NaNoWriMo 2012 winner! I verified the word count late last night, was given a choice of winner badges to add to my blog (it really is beautiful, isn't it?), received a lovely certificate that is already hanging over my desk at work, and was officially labeled a winner on the NaNoWriMo site:

It's a little blurry, but that pink box to the left of my picture says WINNER!

You see how it made a big spike there right at the end? I was on track to finish right on time, but the words pretty much exploded out of my fingertips yesterday. Then, when I was starting to get tired and thinking of calling it a night, I tweeted my word count. And people tweeted back, cheering me on. And I got a little rush of energy and kept right on writing. Then I hit another big word count landmark and tweeted that one. And got more tweets cheering me on. GO GO GO!!! So I went. Their encouragement made me eager to push myself that much harder. To make it happen five whole days ahead of schedule. So it was that I hit my 50,000 word NaNoWriMo goal on day 25. And immediately ordered my winner t-shirt because I want people to know. Granted, I doubt anyone but a fellow writer will even look twice at it, but it'll make me happy every time I put it on.

So here are some arbitrary NaNoWriMo stats. Just because I think stats are fun, so why not?

• Number of days it took to finish: 25
• Most words in a single day: 8,951 (and that's not just most in a NaNo day; that's most ever)
• Least words in a single day: 0
• Number of days I didn't write a single word: 9/25
• Number of days where I wrote at least the target average of 1,667 words: 9/25
• Longest stretch of consecutive days where I didn't write a single word: 4
• Number of novels I read when I should've been writing: 3 (oops)
• Likelihood that my longest stretch of consecutive days was a direct result of reading 3 novels: 100%

Now I just need to finish the book. But since I'm just getting started with the big, climactic part at the end, I think that'll happen sooner rather than later.

AHHHH!!!!

Holy crap, guys! I did it! I actually did it! 

Take a gander at the top word counter off to the left there. 

Then scroll on down and look at the beautiful NaNoWriMo winner badge.

And I didn't even turn into a zombie. 

NaNoWriMo Update

Hello all! Just dropping by for a NaNo update. If you take a gander at my lovely little word count tracker thingies to the left, you'll see that I'm doing pretty well so far! I'm actually a little ahead of where I'm supposed to be according to my fancy pants NaNo stats graph (below).

Not too shabby. Especially since, this time last NaNo, I had long since gone crazy (or, as my husband claims, gone zombie) and given up. But this time around, I'm right on track to finish this book by the end of the month.

So what am I doing differently this time that's making it work? A couple of things actually. 

1. I'm still spending time with my husband. A lot of the time, I'm writing on my laptop and he's playing a video game, but he's only a few feet away from me. We can still talk. If you remember from last time, this was probably the biggest problem for me. I luuurve him, guys. And when I was writing during so much of my "spare" time that I saw him about ten minutes a day, I must've gotten separation anxiety or something. I don't often feel I have anything in common with dogs, but I guess that's not 100% the case. At least I didn't rip up anything in the house. 

2. I, umm....actually like the book I'm writing. Last time around, I was trying to make myself write a contemporary. Thing is, I don't generally read contemporaries. I'd never tried writing one before. If it's not in some way a fantasy or paranormal, it has to have one hell of a hook to draw me in. And I thought I had a pretty awesome hook. But as I got deeper and deeper into the book, I realized I just didn't care. And how am I supposed to write about something I don't care about? Whereas my new book has completely ingrained itself in my soul. I love every goram second of it. (If you don't know what goram is, go watch Firefly. Like, seriously. This is a much bigger emergency than when you hadn't yet seen Sherlock, as Firefly is the best show ever created in the history of television.) Moral of the story? If you absolutely love what you're writing, you're less likely to turn into this: 

3. Last, but certainly not least, I'm not making myself just write whatever comes to mind with no regard for quality. I actually dumped one entire chapter the day after I wrote it and wrote a new one to take its place. I know that there's not supposed to be time for that kind of thing in NaNo, but frankly, I cannot write that way. At all. I'm one of those people who will sometimes sit and stare at the computer screen for half an hour as I try to come up with exactly the right word. I don't want to throw something in there and go back to fix it later. I know I said back here that it was a good thing, and that it was liberating. But you know what? I was lying to myself. I was trying to convince myself that I could be like all those other prolific writers out there. But when it comes down to it, I want to do it right the first time. I mean, I'll still go back and edit the crap out of the MS, but it's not the same thing as writing something I know I'm just going to delete later. For me, that makes me wonder what the point is? And why would I be able to fully devote myself to something when I don't even see the point? So I'm writing at my pace, my way. And instead of being a mutant zombie, I'm more like this:

And that, ladies and gents, is my very most favorite Doctor from Doctor Who. Which you should also watch. Pretty sure my TV recommendations are giving me some serious nerd cred. :)  

10 Steps

Saw this today and just wanted to share.  :)


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