Success!! (NaNo-wise, anyway)

I did it!! I've written 50,000 words (so far) during the month of November...by November 23, in fact! This means I've "won" NaNoWriMo... along with the thousands of other busy writers who will start validating their word counts today. See the very cool winners' badge I get to display over to the right there. I also got a nice certificate that I'll hang on my bulletin board.

I really didn't know if I'd manage it. November was shaping up to be a very busy month, even without the added burden of trying to write a minimum of 1,700 words every single day. I've never done anything like that before. I find it quite astonishing that, there I was, with 50,000 words of a brand new novel under my belt after 23 straight days of writing, when I've only managed about 35,000 words on my other novel, "The Bog," that I've been working on for around four YEARs now! Incredible!

At the risk of sounding vain, I've gotta say I'm pretty pleased with myself. For me, this is a major accomplishment. Not only that, but I've learned a great deal about the craft of novel-writing...or at least about what works for me as a novel-writer.

I've learned about The Snowflake Method, which I worked with during the month of October to plan and plot my story and characters before I started to write. I've learned that Butt + Chair = Book really DOES work! I've learned that I can make the time to write every day if I really want to (or, at least, if I'm really scared to disappoint the almost two dozen people who've been reading along as I've been writing all month!).

And speaking of those people, my esteemed "First Readers" ... Thank you all so much for being part of this. I literally couldn't have done it without you. Or perhaps I should be honest and say "wouldn't" have done it without you. Knowing you're all out there expecting a new chapter every day (whether you read it or not) kept me from slacking off or procrastinating, which is a major weakness of mine when it comes to work that doesn't need to get done *right now*. My refusal to disappoint you was my main motivation in just sitting down and getting this done every day for the past month. You have my eternal gratitude... you will be the reason I finish my very first completed novel. As a small token of my gratitude, there will be a little surprise for you all in your inboxes soon after the final chapter of the first draft is finished :-)