Nov 24 2008
NaNo is ending soon!
For those of us who are participating in the NaNoWriMo exercise - that strange, pointless, wild and wonderful exercise where you try to write a 50,000-word novella, all within the confines of the month of November each year - it’s almost finished, and the last rush is on.
There are only six days left. Which, if your goal is to reach the daily average of 1,667 words, means you should be within 10,002 words of that magic 50,000. If you have fewer than 39,998 words in your manuscript, and have a busy week ahead - you may well be toast. If you’re American, and are planning lots of revelry for your Thanksgiving - uh oh.
I am pleased to say that I’m at 47,878, so I’m cruising. Of course, it does “help” to be unemployed. It also helps to have chosen a story idea that I was really excited about. (I write Fullmetal Alchemist fanfiction, and I’ve had this story waiting in my head for months. I don’t usually do fanfic for the NaNo, but I really wanted to finish this year, and this was a surefire way to make that happen.)
For many people, this coming weekend is going to be a mad rush, and the official site is really going to have to be ready to carry the heavy load on Sunday, as thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people try to upload their manuscript so the site can do an official count, and grant them access to the “Winner!” icons.
That’s what we do it for - those little icons that we can wear proudly on LiveJournal or Facebook or MySpace or discussion forums. Isn’t that insane??
But it’s major fun too. There’s a real feeling of accomplishment when you realize you’ve written an entire novella in just 30 days. Granted, it’s likely a bit…wordy. Verbose. A little…padded. But we always vow that eventually we’ll “clean up” our story, and see if we can “do something” with it. We rarely do, but it’s still a nice goal. And yes, there are actually some people who have indeed polished their novella, worked it into a proper novel, and published the thing. So there’s another thing to goad us on.
Anyway, six days to go. Almost finished, and then we can all collapse in exhaustion for another year!
And start thinking about that Three-Day Novel thingie on Labour Day…
Congratulations on your achievement! I’m afraid I didn’t make it this year - I didn’t put enough oomph into it to even hope of finishing, and I’m stuck around 20,000 words. I do, however, have the beginnings of something decent, and will have to see if I can keep plugging away at it in the months to come. Better luck next year, I guess.
That’s the nice thing — there’s always next year, with this.
[Though I understand that the official NaNo site really needs donations, to help it run things next year.]
Anyway, I’m glad you did get a fair bit done. Way to go!