My last NaNoWriMo post... promise! ;)

Okay, I promised ‘more later’, so here’s my last post about NaNoWriMo, at least until next November when I do it all over again (?!) I even have a few people that have agreed to try it with me. (I’m going to hold you to it!)

I hit the 50,000 word mark on Saturday night at around 9:00 p.m., and then I promptly stopped what I was writing and took a picture of my wordcount stats on the computer (yes, I know, I’m a doofus!) I entered my manuscript on the website to have my numbers verified, and when I did, the screen immediately changed to the ‘winner’s circle’, and it said that I had officially won NaNoWriMo 2008 (took a picture of that, too.) And then I cheered, took a few more pictures, and danced just a little, much to my husband’s amusement.

I had an extra day, so I could have easily gotten more words in, and waited until Sunday night to verify, but the way I looked at it was that I just needed to get to 50,000 words to ‘win’. I guess it’s kind of like having a baby. Nobody gets a medal for NOT getting the epidural and having a ‘natural birth’, and I didn’t get some kind of extra prize for writing 52,000 words vs. 50,000 before midnight, November 30th. So, I’ll just go ahead and get verified, and take pictures, and be done. And in case you couldn’t guess, I got the epidural all three times, too.

And no, I’m not done. I did not get my story finished. Not yet. The story still has a few thousand words left to go, and few more trials for my characters to conquer. And then of course, lots of editing and re-writes. I did NOT do what the website suggested and get a complete ‘story arc’ written. As much as things have changed as I have written, I wanted to see where this might go without pinning myself into an ending. I will finish it, I’m just not ‘under the gun’ so much, so to speak. Jen would kill me if I left her hanging. ;) My goal is to finish in the next week or so.

A few numbers to ponder: 119,301 authors signed up on the website to go on this crazy month-long journey, and 21,683 people got their numbers verified at 50,000 words (or more) and ‘won’. That’s an 18.2% ‘win rate’. And I have to say, I’m really not surprised that more people don’t complete it. It’s much more difficult than I thought it would be, initially. But once I got the momentum going, and got past about 15,000 words, it was easier to follow through. And I think it helps that I just REALLY hate to lose. Really, I do.

So, if you check the www.nanowrimo.org website, do an author search, and enter my author name (withbothfeet), you will see an awesome purple ‘winner’ bar on my author’s page.

Thanks again to all my lovely friends and family that listened to me go on about it this last month, probably to the point of splitting headaches. Sorry if I’ve been… what was the word you used, S.H.? ‘Obsessed’?! Yep, I have been, kind of. But I’m so glad I did it. I feel like I found a little piece of myself I’d forgotten about. The piece that isn’t just a wife and a mom and a volunteer (not that those aren’t wonderful things to be)…taking this personal challenge made me feel like a creative, complicated, artistic person. I guess I just needed a little kick in the pants to remember that. And what a month-long, caffeine-fueled, amazing kick in the pants it turned out to be.