But what you’re probably most curious about is whether I actually won again or not. Or maybe you know me well enough now that you already know the answer.
Either way, I did indeed win! Fourth year in a row. I finished with a total of 52,218 words. And in case you’ve been keeping track of my past years (which you probably haven’t; I would be very impressed if you did), I actually set a new record for me this year. Previously set back in 2014, I surpassed that record by 99 words.
^Ignore the top where it says how I won with 52,282 words. When I went to validate my “novel” on the website, it added sixty-four words to my total. I trust the word count on my actual Word document instead.
As you can see, I’m still very disciplined when it comes to writing daily. (Isn’t the accumulation graph pretty?) However, for the first time since I began winning, I spent two of those days not quite reaching the 1667 daily word count (see days 11 + 13). So the very next day, I had to tack on those missing words with my regular 1667 words.
Here is my daily word count graph. Because one graph is not enough.
I did end up going with my “plan” of writing a bunch of stories until something stuck. Except a story never actually stuck, so I wrote many short stories/flash fiction/scenes that could belong in a larger piece of work.
By mere coincidence, I actually wrote 30 stories. For 30 days. Granted, on that last day, I was itching to write something new, but I liked that thirty number, so I stretched out the last story. (I spent the last four days of the month writing various scenes for a particular character within her world and, well, by the middle of it, I found myself changing the narrator’s voice. Oops.)
I wish I could say that I worked on a completely new story for each day of the month, but it didn’t happen. On my “bad” days, I would work on 2-3 stories in one day; on my “good” days, I would continue writing the story that I had worked on in the previous day.
It was certainly a good exercise for me creatively, though. I dabbled in all sorts of genres. (It reaffirmed my conviction that I like writing adventure, because those were the type of stories I found myself writing more for. And I felt like the words came easier to me.) I also picked up reoccurring themes that I kept writing. Unfortunately, with a handful of them, I didn’t finish the particular story arc before I moved onto something else, simply because I couldn’t figure out how to end it and I got bored.
And unlike my previous years, I actually got some sleep! Instead, I sacrificed basically every other type of entertainment I would typically fill my free time with. Sorry Stranger Things 2. Haven’t gotten around to watching you yet. And the Veronica Roth book that I stared back in October? Yeah, I’m still in the process of reading CARVE THE MARK. I finally have 46 pages left, so at least I’m nearing the end. (I just didn’t think it’d take me so long to read it…)
Anyway. Here’s my annual grainy photo from my webcam with me and my lovely Winner’s Certificate.
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