I did it, I did it, I DID IT!! NaNoWriMo

I'm so excited. 
I did it! 
I completed NaNoWriMo! 
I'm a winner!!! 
Woooohoooo! 

OK, so I've completed the challenge portion of writing 50K words in 30 days, made extremely difficult because I had two bouts of not writing for several days in a row, so here, the last day of NaNo, I still had to write nearly 10K words.  But I did it! 

I still have another chapter to go on my novel to tie up all the loose ends.  And, of course, I've already found things I left out.  Things that were in my head, but never made it to the page.  So I have comments "scribbled" on to my manuscript that will have to be fixed on the second draft, once I truly complete my first draft.  But none of that takes away from the fact that I've never made it this far before, so this is truly, truly a HUGE thing for me to celebrate!

Just so that you'll understand how much of a challenge this was for me, I'm also posting my graph.  You'll see that I had two very large plateaus.  Normally, this is when I would have called it quits.  But thanks to my writing conference and HUGE support from my family and friends, I pushed through both of those plateaus and got finished. 

The only real frustration I had was tonight.  The 50,103 that NaNo registered?  My word processing program has that at 51,023.  So, nearly 1000 words that didn't count?  When you're only writing 50K, 1K is a large amount.  And my analytical brain wants to know what it didn't like about those words.

Okay, it's after midnight.  I still have things to do before bed, so I'm going to call it a night.  Thanks for reading and celebrating with me.  Once I have my second draft, I may post a few short scenes from the book, see if you like this one as much as the second one that I've already posted scenes from.  :)

Hope everyone has a great day!

Today

Last night, I was able to get a fair jump on catching up some on NaNoWriMo.  I think my story is shaping up nicely, although I'm already thinking about all of the editing I'll be doing on it.  :)  I'm trying not to do it now, as the main point of NaNo, as I understand it, is to get the first (very rough) draft finished.  It must have a beginning, a middle, and an end.  Then I have all the time I need to whip it into shape afterward.  That's my understanding, obviously, but that's what I'm trying to do.  I'm hoping by the time I do the first revision, I'll have a book worth showing my First Readers for feedback.  :) 

I'm very lucky to have three people interested in reading it.  My Hubby (who doesn't read romance, but knows a lot about construction, so he'll be able to point out any errors I've made with the story there), my Mom (who does read romance and paranormal, along with a host of other things, and who I got my addiction to reading from, Thank You, Mom!!!!), and my friend Melissa (she'll always be Missy to me, who reads as voraciously as I do, and has been my guinea pig since we were fifteen, reading angsty poetry to each other and encouraging each other in our writing... she's also an excellent copyeditor, so she'll have her work cut out for her... hehehehe).  :) 

So I have some awesome first readers, and I'm looking forward to being able to have a manuscript that I can show them, even if it's still a couple of months out.  They're already looking forward to reading my second and third book in my witchy/pagan series, as much, I think, as I'm looking forward to writing them!  :)  Now just to see if an agent or publisher will be interested in publishing them... and that thought brings on cold sweats, so we won't go there yet.  I'm going to have to depend on my husband to keep me motivated to send it out the door when that time comes. 

But I'm getting way, way ahead of myself.  It's shaping up to look like the first draft will be more than 50K long, but I'm still hoping to finish in the next 11 days, to qualify to "win" NaNoWriMo.  So, we'll see.  I can use all the good luck, good wishes, good vibes, and/or prayers you care to send!  :)

I've been week two'ed

I've been week two'ed.  :D  Week two of NaNoWriMo hit me like a ton of bricks.  I've been told this is a phenomenon that affects a lot of participants in which we just can't keep up the momentum of week one.  But I am happy to report that I pushed through.  I continued to write, albeit a little more slowly, and I learned some things about my characters that I didn't know before.  ;)  But I'm within 1011 words of being caught up, and I hope I'll be able to do that and more a little later today.  So wooohhoooo for pushing through, even when life's happening all around you, and it's tough to do!  :)

Hope everyone else is having a great November!  Let me know how you're doing!

NaNoWriMo update

I haven't been feeling well today.  I still don't know if I've caught a bit of a bug (as my hubby was feeling poorly yesterday), or if it's a lack of sleep.  Last night, I was up until approximately 1:30 or 2:00.  When I fell asleep, I was plagued with dreams of my characters.  I woke up several times during the night, confused and unsure of where I was or who I was (fever?  or my characters?).  I finally got up at 4:30 and made some coffee, I just couldn't get back to sleep.  Inspiration struck, and I wrote in the neighborhood of 2000 words.  By 9:00am, I was exhausted and laid down for an hour and a half.

After that, I have been up and down all day, nauseated, headache, achy, and tired.  In fact, even now, I've been awake for less than an hour, and I'm already wanting to lay down again.  I did write more tonight, but I think I'm done for the night.  I'm going to have to go to bed soon, try to sleep some more.  Hope I feel better tomorrow.  Ugh.  Lots to do this week!

Wishing everyone a very happy November!!!  If you're NaNo'ing, let me know.  I love writing buddies!!!

I might post an excerpt from the book I'm working on in the next day or so.  It's still a very very rough first draft, but I may put a short clip here in the next few days.