NaNoWriMo Wrap Up

My last NaNoWriMo update went through day 20 and I'm now on day 29. Suffice it to say that over the last week and a half, I've been writing and focusing less time on updating the status on my journal. After 50,924 words and 235 pages (in manuscript format), I'm finished!

When I typed the last sentence this afternoon around 2PM, I felt the greatest high. It felt better than what I imagined floating on clouds must feel like. I felt changed in some way, like someone had scrambled my molecules and shaped me in a slightly different fashion. I know that sounds strange but I can't think of any other way to say it. Besides, my brain is a little toasty so excuse the hyperbole.

Of course, my novel is a GRAND mess but it's MY mess. I'm going to get back to some short stories in December and come the first day of Kwanzaa, I will start the revision process. There are a lot of problems with my story but there's a lot that I get right too. I just need to pull out those parts where the setting feels dead on, the characters are speaking words true to them, and the scenes that are most pivotal to find a way to polish it all in Version 2. I'm hoping to go very slowly with version 2.0 because editing is where the hard work starts! I'm looking forward to it. I love my story. I love it even more than when I started it.

I found the pep talk given by author Deanna Raybourn very helpful. Be quiet and be seated she said. I took today and tomorrow off from work (I've also got the weekend). I wanted to finish my novel in solitude. A few co-workers who knew I was participating in NaNo asked me yesterday how things were going and what my book was about. As I started talking, I remembered Deanna's words so I shut up. I'm not going to give a synopsis. I'm not going to post any excerpts because my novel is still a work in progress. I don't want to kill it before it has a chance to really shine.

I'm hoping a few kind people will read it from beginning to end once I'm done, sometime around late winter/early spring.

Otherwise, I'm going to keep writing. I only went 5 days during NaNo where I wrote nothing at all. Not bad! This tells me I should be able to keep writing everyday. If not 2k a day then at least half that!

For the rest of the day, I am turning off my computer and I'm going to celebrate completing the first complete draft with a glass of sparkling cider. Cheers!

Final Stats
Word Count Reached 50924
Total Hours Spent Writing 55.00
Avg Words Per Hour 926
Avg Words Per Day 1756
Avg Hours Spent Writing Per Day 1.90
Words Remaining To Goal 0
Days Remaining In November 1
Avg Time Per Writing Session 1.571428571