By the end of my last blog post, I basically persuaded myself to participate in NaNoWriMo. Going into it, I only had three rules for myself:
1.) I was going to write various short stories.
2.) I was going to try and write every day.
3.) I was going to aim at beating last year’s NaNo word count.
I wrote a total of ten short stories. (Isn’t that a nice number? I didn’t even plan it.) I was happy to finally write three of them because I’ve been meaning to write them for years, but I never got the motivation to actually write it. The idea was recorded in a notebook, but it tampered off so I never touched it. One of them was something that I thought of way back in ninth grade, so the fourteen-year-old in me was relieved that I finally got it to work.
Story #2 was inspired by a song. Stories #5 + 6 were drawn from plots that were put up for adoption from the NaNo forums. Story #7 was inspired by a dream I had back in January. Stories #8 + 9 were thought of on the spot when I was typing way while simultaneously watching a MSU football game (even though the stories had nothing to do with football). Story #10 kept me going for twelve days and I managed to crank out 19,000 words for it, which was inspired by the tv series by sister was binge-watching on Netflix (thank, sis). The best part of the last story is that it’s not completed and I can go back to it whenever I want because there is no ending in mind, only the end of certain characters.
Want to take a guess what my final word count was once the month was over?
Answer: 52, 119 words.
I won.
I. Won. NaNoWriMo.
I won!!!!
I finally did it. I finally won NaNoWriMo. It only took me four years, but I did it.
I never skipped a day of writing. I was very strict with myself on trying to obtain at least 1,667 words each day. I even found time on Thanksgiving to hit the daily word count. I was always exceeding the word count for the day that by the time it was November 20, I was officially a full day ahead of schedule. Therefore, I managed to reach the 50k mark a day early, but I still went ahead and wrote on the 30th simply because of rule #2 and because I wanted to keep my bar graph consistent.
As you can tell, I’m quite proud of myself. Not bad for someone who went into it at last minute without much of a plan.
Now I can finally say what to expect in terms of winner goodies. I finally got a fancy ‘winner’ ribbon for my account.
I didn’t think that I could do it. However, I do have to thank my August/September writing project for teaching me that I could crank out that many words in a day if I keep to a schedule (even if I didn’t feel like writing on a particular day).
And the fact that I hardly leave the house. In years past, I always had other commitments that I needed to focus on instead. But we’re not going to talk about my hermit lifestyle.
Because at the end of the day, it’s nice to complete goals. Goals that surprise you. Goals that you didn’t think that you had it in you. Goals that display your determination.
Now onto a new goal.
That is the face of surprise and excitement. Sorry about the horrible quality of the picture.
(Can we just get an applause for me for being able to figure out how to incorporate pictures on this post?)
