My Last Words on NaNoWriMo 2013

My very last words –I promise! It’s finally December and I’m sure all non-participators are officially tired of hearing about word counts, character flaws, plot holes, and seeing NaNo hashtags, let alone the word “NaNo.” I’m sure my enthusiasm was cute and contagious after weeks 1 and 2, now I’m fairly certain most, if not all, of my Facebook friends and Twitter followers are as sick of my word count updates as they are of Movember’s ‘70s porn star staches.

Speaking of Movember, I’ve been lucky enough to be locked in my room for most of the month so I haven’t been overly subjected to said facial hair. Yay for small victories!

Thanks to my weekly progress reports (Kate is to blame!), I don’t need to list every practical thing I learned over the past month. But there is one lesson I wanted to share: I had no idea I was capable of writing so much in 15 days! Instead of wiring a little bit each day for 30 days, I scheduled myself 20 designated writing days at the start of NaNo, and I wrote on most of them. But seriously, I managed to write 50 779 NEW words of fiction in 15 of days! Sure, I’ve probably written that much in a month for school, but I still find this kind of incredible. Like, really incredible!

Before November 2013 I wasn’t completely convinced that I was capable of buckling down and producing the way I did. I managed to write three brand new stories in three different genres and one of them is a rough schematic of a novel or novella, and another is for an anthology I’ve been invited into with other awesome authors. Plus, I managed to buckle down and edit a story for a different anthology when I wasn’t NaNoing. These are huge deals! Huge milestones for the insecure fledgling novelist that I am! Talk about dream boosters.

I have NaNo to thank in small part for all of these things because without the challenge I don’t think I would have tried to push myself like this. And I don’t think I would have gotten my “novella” written and I’ve had that story in my head for a long time now. NaNo was an excellent pusher, and I’m grateful for it!

Except now I don’t have excuses. Uh oh.

Kidding! Mostly. December marks a lot of new for me: new job, new editing, new writing projects, new Anxiety Ink projects, which are hush hush for now, new balancing. I’m excited and nervous.

And that, along with four updates, sums up my very first National Novel Writing Month experience!

50779 / 50000 words. 102% done!