I DID IT!! I DID IT!! I DID IT!!




As of November 29, 2007 at 12:00 a.m. in the freakin' morning...
I have written 50,215 amazing, beautiful words!

Thanks everyone for your tremendous support and encouragement and interest. I feel like I should be holding a really heavy gold-plated award while I write this (I did NaNoWriMo and all I got was this stupid t-shirt), but it's true that I couldn't have done it without all of you, my family and friends...

Especially my husband and my son, who have been amazingly understanding of my need to do this even though it meant they haven't seen me in weeks, and even though I've gotten crankier and crankier as the words got harder and harder to write. During this last week, my son had gotten fond of saying: "Mommy it's okay, you keep working. I'll see you next year." (he's only five and he thinks tomorrow is next year, but it didn't make it any easier to hear!)

And my poor husband has had it the hardest during my absence this month, having to pick up all the slack with the house, flooding basements, an acre's worth of leaves to rake in the yard, birds in the chimney, running all the errands, taking the kid to hockey and swimming and doing homework and tons more...and I love him so much!!!!

To everyone who has had to listen to me ramble on and on and on about this character or that one, or the holes in my manuscript that kept driving me crazy...thankyou--and I'm so sorry. I'll call in a day or two (after I get some sleep) and I won't mention the book at all, I promise. Okay, maybe just to--No, I won't. Not at all. Unless you want to hear about it, but then only if you ask...or I ask you and you say it's okay. :)

I want to also say thankyou to my friends the Vanettes--a group of fabulous, talented writers who have taken me under their wing so to speak in this last year, and who have all shown me so much support and encouragement in the constant development of my writing. Without them, I don't think I would have ever tried this in the first place.

My coworkers have been really supportive too--at least those who know what the hell I was doing this last month. It's kind of funny really (although I may not think so when this new rep of mine is still hangin' round my neck in another year), but since I'm pretty new in the office, not many people know me, or know what I do 'on the side'--so after this month they are all positive that I'm a crazy anti-social madwoman who's probably been playing Halo3 on that laptop in the mornings before work and at lunchtime. :)

Anyway, celebrate with me. I'll be on cloud nine...starting tomorrow. Right now I'm going to bed. :)

You may have noticed that I've been pretty busy, and if you've read this blog before, if you've been unlucky enough to talk to me on the phone, or via email or in a post somewhere else online--basically if you've spoken two words to me in any format at all within the last six weeks--then you already know the reason.

I'm in NaNoWriMo mode. And my god has it been hard!!

When I started this I thought--how bad can this really be? I write every day as it is, so this will just be a few more hundred words on my daily count, right? *snort*

Okay, I was wrong. And it wasn't the first time believe it or not.

The difference is in how you write for Nano. The challenge is not only to get the required wordcount by the end of the month, but also to have a completed novel by then. Which means you have to "keep moving forward" (I'm stealing from Walt Disney here folks).

There's no editing in Nano. There's no going back to fix. There's no layering. There's only crappy, incohesive, incomprehensible writing.

Now, I've learned in the last few days that I can be okay with that. But at about the halfway mark when I saw what was coming out of my brain onto the screen I wanted to cry and scream and go back and erase the whole lot of it. How can I work like this, I thought. I'm very methodical usually, and it was killing me to see all of the glaring holes and problems with the storyline and not have the time to fiddle with it and fix it.

But I realize that after Nano is done, the fixing will come later. That's the whole idea isn't it? To at least get a first draft of something down. To prove that you can take an idea from start to finish (no matter how terrible it is). The fixing can come later, after the rush and exhileration of having actually met that goal fades and you get back to real life.

For anyone who's interested, you're very welcome to visit my page at the NaNoWriMo website to track my progress. So far I'm not doing to badly, but I could use all the support I can get.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/user/208090

See you at the finish line!