About that NaNoWriMo Thing...

So during November I got this crazy idea to participate in NaNoWriMo.  Actually, I arrived at the decision at around 10 pm on Halloween, and then hovered around my computer for the rest of the night waiting for the stroke of midnight so I could get going.  I spent the month slaving away over my laptop keyboard in an attempt to complete the seemingly impossible task of writing 50,000 words of a novel in just 30 days.  But I did it!

As luck would have it, I had outlined a story a few months ago, so I had a plot and characters and setting ready and waiting to go.  I've never done anything like this before, so I handled it exactly the way anyone who knows me would expect me to.  I printed out my detailed outline, character sketches, location descriptions, and lists of strong action verbs and adjectives, and put them all in a binder with color-coded tabs and a whole bunch of loose leaf paper.  Really, the only downside was the fact that the loose leaf was wide ruled instead of college ruled.  I somehow managed to persevere, though, despite a nearly tragic mishap with a spilled water bottle in my work bag that left the bottoms of the papers slightly crinkly (and nearly claimed the life of my phone).

I'm a month behind on most of my tv shows and my reading of The Hobbit in preparation for watching the movie ground to a halt, but I hit 50,000 words on November 28th, two whole days early.  Then I promptly went out and bought myself a Slurpee.  Because I deserved it.

This story still has a long way to go.  I have close to 50 chapters sketched out and I finished November somewhere in the middle of the 10th.  I don't know if I'll ever get around to finishing it (or if I'll ever actually show it to anyone), but it was nice to get the words that had been rattling around in my head out onto paper. It was also fun to have a sense of purpose for the first time in a while.  Maybe that'll be what keeps me going.  I am, of course, taking a writing break.  I've got a whole load of craft ideas that I've been waiting to work on, and a lot of hours of tv to catch up on.  I like to think that it won't take long for me to get back to writing.