I’m A Wiener – I Mean Winner!

I tend to celebrate crossing over with a meditative ceremony where I print the book out and neatly stack its pages on the floor. When everything has been properly laid out, I take a few steps back from the work, close my eyes, and offer up my thanks to the writing powers for another bountiful harvest. At which point, I get a running start and dive headlong into my word-pile, rolling around and snorting like a pig. And then I fall asleep for three days. How you celebrate is up to you.
― Chris Baty, No Plot? No Problem!

Yeah, I don’t think I’d go that far, but it’s a good feeling, crossing that finish line. I have admit that it wasn’t quite as much fun this year because there was no validation, so technically I could have just entered in an arbitrary word count over 50,000 and would have still received my winner’s certificate, but where would the fun in that be?

This year I had something happen that has never happened before. I have a complete draft on my hands. It’s a pretty messy draft, but it’s complete – no plot holes that I need to go back and fill with spackle and I’ve reached the logical conclusion. You’d almost think I knew what I was doing.

It’s also a kind of bitter-sweet victory for me this year because this is the last in a five book series. I’ve enjoyed this universe a lot and I really like the characters. I’m going to miss them.

This was also the most even-keeled NaNo I’ve ever experienced. Usually I’m up and down, falling behind and leaping forward, but this year I didn’t seem to hit the extremes. Slow and steady won the race. I didn’t hit a single day of 4,000 words, but I didn’t miss a day either.

The one thing I didn’t enjoy about NaNo this year was the new website. There was nothing wrong with the old site, but of course people in charge like nothing better than change. And trust me, it was a change for the worse. It’s no where near as easy to navigate and a lot of the options I used to enjoy are gone. We all lost our buddies and I only got a handful of them back, but that’s okay because I never logged into the site longer than it took for me to update my word count. I’d like to think they’ll keep working on it so it’ll be better next year, but I doubt it.

My take away from this year’s experience is remembering how much faster and easier the writing is on my Neo, and the importance of regular office hours. With any luck I’ll be able to keep up both these things.

You know, after I shovel the NaNo detritus from my office.