On Finishing ( and Winning!) Nano




I did it.

Thursday, Nov. 30th, I went to a friends house and we had a last sprint party, stayed up until 1AM, and drank cocoa, and I finished with about 51k words.

I'm honestly in shock, and it hasn't sunk in yet.


A friend was congratulating me, and I just said, "I honestly have literally no idea how I did it," and her reply was: "Good tea and the power of Jesus." Amen and that's pretty much it.


I worked, AND had surgery, AND had family stuff, AND still did the thing.


But planning is weird now, because I had someone invite me to go on an all day shopping trip sometime in December for Christmas shopping, and my first reaction was all: "But wait, I need to write 2K words, I can't - OH WAIT."
Kind of like how after I graduated the fact that I DIDN'T have homework every evening was strange to me.


It was honestly an exercise in discipline. I CAN write 2k words a day, but I just need to set aside time for it.


I was also having SOOO many people ask me what my novel is about, and.... I don't have a synopsis. There's the one I wrote in like 15 seconds to put on the nanowrimo website just to have SOMETHING there, but I'm ashamed of it and we're going to pretend like that never happened.


So that's on my to do list. The most I've been able to do is link people to my pinterest board, and sort of go: "Well..."


I also didn't FINISH, per say. That is, I didn't write 'The End' in the story.
I started Nano already 25k words in, which means I now have over 75k words in this one project, and it's not done.


So there's that. All I seem to have done is made myself a giant mess of things, because It's now spread over 5 word docs, and I have no idea of the chronological order of things. Two of the docs are parts one and two, since one doc got so big it was sluggish, and kept crashing my laptop, meaning I'd have to reboot and scroll ALL the way down every time.


 Two of the docs are scenes that are to come. I started them when I got stuck on the main storyline, and just jumped ahead to keep writing words, and the fith happens in the past of my story (I needed it to keep writing and was stuck on my other docs, and I also needed the scene written out because I had to reference it).

So yes, I just made myself a mess. Kind of like when you are trying to detangle a ball of yarn and instead find the whole room covered in string and it's really not gotten any better.


BUT, 50k more words is nice. Very very nice, if I do say so myself.


The reason it's taken me 2 weeks (!!!!) to write my wrap up is because after a month of putting off Christmas shopping/life responsibilities they all came and smacked me in the face at once like a pile of heavy bricks, demanding attention, so I've spent the last two weeks adulting.



(I did Nano! Check out my updates here and here)


(I also just found a notebook or two in my desk where I'd started to set things out. Please send help. And tea.)

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