NaNo the other half: winner

The wrap up party for NaNoWriMo is called Thank God it's Over. I never really understood that name; sure, it was hard, but I usually finished at least a couple of days before the 30th, with an enormous margin to par from pretty much the first week. Not so this year. This year, it really felt like thanking the universe for this (self-afflicted, I am aware) ordeal to be over.
Which it now is! I just wrote the final of my 50,020 words, wrapping up the story and the storyline, finishing off my character's development and plunging me into one last day of November that is NaNo-free. I don't think I've ever written this many days consecutively, usually I'm so far ahead I can skip a day or two in between. Not so this year, although this year I also wanted to get all the badges, which means writing 21 days in a row. Some days, that meant I just wrote 100 words, or thereabouts. My word count graph per day looks like an interesting roller coaster:

Yup, that really is a low point of 120 words.

Maybe it was a very busy year at work (which would explain the lack of blogging too), but I can't remember it being this hard in other years. Or maybe it was my subject matter, which was a bit more personal and emotional than I'd anticipated. Or maybe my characters just didn't want to be in my story (I can't blame them). Whatever it was, out of the 7 NaNo's I've 'won', this was by far the most difficult. I'm hoping I'll feel the accompanying feeling of 'most accomplished' soon too, for now I mostly feel relieved and intensely tired.
Tomorrow, I can start doing all those other things I do in my spare moments, such as actually finishing the Harry Potter novel I've been reading for three weeks now. NaNo is great for forcing yourself to write, but it's good that it's confined to one month a year. But, inevitably, I'll put myself through this again next year, with fresh enthusiasm, which I'll probably start to feel coming in tomorrow. But for now, sleep.

NaNo Days 10 to 15: holiday sprint

So being on holiday gave me ample chance to write lots of words. Most days, those words actually came to me and it was easy to reach 2,000, but I've had some days where I had to search for topics as well. I'm now in that 'middle bit'; all the characters have been introduced, they have gathered, their backgrounds are known, and now Stuff Needs to Happen. But at the same time I'm also working towards the end, because if there is one thing frustrating about NaNo it is finishing the writing but not the story. Because then I know the story will never be finished, and will always be lacking an ending. Or a middle, in some years I've written the ending of the story but not the middle.
Today is the 15th of November, which means I should be at 25,000 words, as the month is halfway through. As we speak, I am at 28,130 words, putting me two days ahead of par. I'd hoped for a bit more headway, as I have a pretty busy work week waiting for me when I get home, but this will have to do. At least I'm not behind. And at least I'm still liking my characters, my plot, and my writing, even if it is difficult to get and keep going sometimes. Let's hope I'll keep up the writing when I'm back home!

NaNo Days 4 to 9: Ups and downs

So I've been focusing so much on writing NaNo, that I'd forgotten to do the meta-writing part, that is, the blog. The good news is: I'm still writing! I just reached 15k!
It's been a bit of a bumpy road getting there, with my daily word count sweeping up and down like a maniacal roller coaster:

What goes up, must come down?

It's been a crazy week at work, reflected in the crazy amount of writing I've done on some days, and the very little I've done on others. Luckily for me, I'm spending the next week in a cute little cottage in France, which will give me plenty of time to catch up. My daily goal has been 2,000 words or more, and as you can see I managed to do something very near that on at least 5 days so far. That's more than half of my writing days. Well, when you put it like that, it doesn't sounds so bad...

NaNo Days 2 & 3: 5k!

So, after a first day of writing 1k, I had to write a bit more every day to get back on par. Today's par is 5k, and I have just finished my writing streak of today at 5,011 words. It still feels very much like the beginning of the story, like I'm getting to know the characters and figuring out who they are and what they're going to do.
This year I'd planned ahead and given myself a book of 22 chapters; 1 prologue, 10 flashback chapters interspersed with 10 present-day chapters, and 1 epilogue. Today, I decided to throw all of that out, and just mix the flashbacks in together with the rest of the story, without bothering with chapter starts or finishes. I can't see why I never realised to do this before, maybe I'll run into issues with this later on, but for now it feels like a revelation. It does make the whole thing more stream-of-consciousness, which is in the modernist corner I usually try to avoid, but we'll see how it works out.
Tomorrow I'll be at a write-in, so I hope to get lads more words in before the business of the workweek prevents me from writing for one or two hours every day!

NaNo Day 1: A quick 1k

Today was always going to be busy, with work and swimming and friends coming over, but just after 11 I could actually start my writing for this year's NaNo. I put in 1000 words exactly, which was the point at which I should have stopped, but I continued for another 80 words before deciding that tomorrow was a better time to write. I am not a late night writer, it has been proven yet again. More to follow on the morrow!