Winner!!!

I've heard that the second year of NaNo is the hardest. That this is the year when everything combines against you and you find your wordcount lagging and you motivation lagging too.

That certainly didn't apply to me.

As most of my readers know, I hit the 50,000 mark on the 19th - not too shabby for what was supposed to be my hardest year. And this was despite many struggles I had - frequent burnout for no reason, needing to help take care of my siblings, school, being deathly ill, and temporary blindness come to mind. But I did it! And I close this day with 90,286 words.

It's been fun. It's been great! Last year I did it more or less alone, and this year I had several friends and some family, which is probably why I did so well and so quickly. Convincing Fred to join, and getting in a word war with him, was probably the best thing for my word count.


I probably would have done better if the weekly meetings I had with Fredji, m&m, Unit of Energy, and occasionally Goober and Sam had been more about serious writing than making fun of each other and goofing off together, but it was more fun this way. I hope everyone wants to do it again next year!

I also had great fun with my characters. Kristy and Ezekiel are like two friends of mine now, and the rest of the cast is hanging about, smiling and gently prodding me to make the story better so they actually have meaningful parts in it. I've had great fun creating their world and will enjoy improving it.

I'm also a little sad. NaNo has such a magic about it, the wonder of having a deadline, and of having the widgets and wars and the website to update on. And now it's over, over for another year. A year! That's a long, long time.

A long, long time that I should spend improving this year's (and last year's!) writing.

But it's time, for now, to say goodbye. And to start writing 'goodbye' as one word again, and put hyphens where they belong, and use contractions, and not add a 'very' and a 'really' wherever possible. Time to start worrying about quality as well as quantity. And time to not put writing first, time to rediscover a decent bedtime, exercise, cleaning my room, and timely homework. And studying. That would be good.