If I had known October 31st how crazy my November would be, I probably wouldn’t have signed up for NaNoWriMo again this year.
Seriously.
Due to extraneous and unavoidable circumstances, I was gone or otherwise occupied during the first half of the month and ended up way, way behind par. (Day 11, I was down by half–nearly 9,000 words. *gulps*) (And then the last week of the month, the display on my faithful little laptop died. Thank God I had a netbook.)
Cue the obligatory pressure and temptation to wring my hands and panic. (Where, oh, WHERE, is that red button with the large, friendly letters spelling out, “Don’t Panic”?)
It wouldn’t have been the end of life, the universe, and everything if I hadn’t made it to 50,000 words, and it even would have been completely understandable, but I had been really looking forward to trying it again this year.
So I prayed about it. And you know what? The Lord helped me write the other 32,000 words I needed in those last fifteen days without killing myself on the weekends or going absolutely insane.
Looking back at this last month, it’s actually pretty amazing I managed to finish at all. The only days I made par in November were Day 3 and Day 50.
I was a NaNo Rebel this year and worked on two projects. (TOSOTH and a new fairytale-type story idea.) The funny thing is that after Day 2, my second idea completely took over. Elbowed TOSOTH right out of the way, rubbed her inky little hands together, and said, “You’re going to write me.”
So I did.
Lady Ink isn’t finished yet–I’m anticipating it’ll be somewhere between 70,000 and 100,000 words, given the way things are going–but the story is shaping up to be a blast.
TOSOTH is just over 100,000 words now, and I’m in the end-stretch. A few of the plot threads keep resisting all efforts to gather them together, but they’ll come around. I’m really looking forward to finishing it. 2013 is shaping up to be a fun year, writing-wise.
To those of you who participated in NaNoWriMo and won, congratulations!
To those of you who participated in NaNoWriMo and didn’t make it, congratulations for making the attempt!
To those of you who lingered on the side of the pool and debated dipping a toe in, try it next year! The water’s great!
And for those of you who live with and/or are friends with a NaNoWriMo writer, thank you so much for putting up with us. 😀 We appreciate it.