NaNo Days 21 to 29: Winner!

I made it! It took a couple of long evenings writing, but I pulled it off!
Dire measurements were need, though, as the stats page indicated I would not make it if I kept up the pace I had on the 20th. So I set myself the goal of writing at least 2,000 words every day I could write, and writing at least 3,000 days on the weekends. This led to even more crazy roller coaster graphs:

If you count properly, I reached 50k in 20 days rather than 30. I can't remember ever having so few days to actually write on in November, but I didn't realise that it really was only 20 days until I finished this evening. Wow, that makes the result slightly more impressive...

One of the things that saved this NaNo was the World Cup. I like writing with something happening in the background, a sort of constant white noise, as long as it doesn't demand too much of my attention. Football for me is just the thing. I don't really care about the outcome, but it gives me a nice point to rest my eyes on whenever I need to think of where to move the story next.

Not that I had a lot of those moments with this NaNo story. I had planned out the main story points in advance, with all the characters I needed to make the whole come together. About two thirds through I feared I needed another character to flesh everything out enough, but I managed to get there in the end. Just, I might add; I finished at 50,018 words; perhaps the narrowest marging I have ever had over the 50k. But I was so done with writing at this point... Getting 1,667 words in every day is pretty doable, but putting in at least 2,000 whenever you write, with some days getting close to 5,000 words just to catch up again, is like doing small sprints during a marathon; exhausting.

But I made it! And I pretty much like my story! There were some inspired sentences in there, when I felt like was really in the writing flow. There were also some bits where I was just stringing words together, pretty sure I was already done with the topic, pretty sure nothing was gained from saying basically the same thing in yet another slightly different way, but as always with NaNoWriMo, it's not about the quality, it's about the quantity. 

And I got there in the end, even in just 20 days.