Finished!

Well ... in the sense that November is over anyway. I finished NaNoWriMo officially with 50,077 words at around 18:30 eastern on 11/30/06 ... technically I could have written more (the story is not complete by any stretch of the imagination) but after a massive push to reach the finish line I was burned out and tired and opted to relax a bit before work instead.

The 50,077 word count does make me an official winner, however, and that makes me very happy. Sunday night I didn't think I'd make it ... but my wife and co-workers kept on me to keep me writing. Really I wouldn't have made it without the help of my family and friends keeping after me all along the way; thank you to all of you.

I had a lot of trouble due to work early in the month that really put me behind in my word count and that greatly discouraged me because I never managed to dig myself out of that hole until the last day. Part of that was just work in general ... changing me schedule around the day before the starting gun sounded really put a crimp in my plans ... killing both my time and energy ... of couse I added to my own problems by not focusing as much as I should have on weekends and particularly on the long Thanksgiving weekend.

Looking back over the month there were definately several things that I'll try to do different next year (and yes, I fully intend to go through this madness again next November) but, to me at least, that's a large part of what this is all about; exploring the creative process and finding ways to refine the way that I approach things and work.

As for the story ... how did it go? Pretty well ... I was able to keep tighter focus than I did in January, and I think that it helped over all since I had a better idea of where I was going. I was happy with my writing flow most of the time and, while I can unashamedly say that there are passages of utter garbage in it, I think that the general flow of the story feels better. On the other hand, I'm only maybe halfway through my planned story arc and that (to me) smudges my win to a degree (not that it will keep me from using my 'winner' icon ... it just gives me a little more room for improvement), whereas my 'unplanned' story in Janurary I managed to complete both the arc and wordcount in 31 days.

Anyway ... I'm at work so I'm going to cut this short. I'll have more to say here in the next few days so stay tuned (I know ... I've said THAT before... )

Feel free to pop over to my NaNoWriMo Profile and see my daily wordcount or read through the excerpt I posted there. Just click the winner icon below.