Wednesday, November 30, 2011

November 30th - A novel reflection

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 I may have hit 50,000 words 2 weeks ago, but I finished the novel tonight. What a strange and glorious feeling, to know you have written a book, to know you have told a story, and to know that so much of yourself has been poured into something so grand, so outrageously colossal, and to still feel as though there is so much more to be said.

Looking back at the last three NaNoWriMo events, how much has changed, how it's so strange to have such a good grip on how much 50,000 words really is. It seems like nothing now.

2009 was my first year, and by far the hardest. I had no plot, no real idea of where I was going, plenty of breakdowns and as I recall correctly, quit multiple times throughout, then finished with 50,003 words.

2010 was my moment of true glory. A single dream fueled 68,000 morbid and beautiful words of historical fiction. Strange tides swept over everything I had to say, and twists and turns made the story stranger and harder to follow, yet easier and easier to write with each passing day. In June, I ordered a hard copy and tried to keep myself from jumping around like an idiot as I grasped it in my hands so tightly, as if it would float away. What a glorious, glorious month.

Camp NaNoWriMo was this past August, and I wrote 50,000 words about lesbian vampires despite everything. My asthma was the worst it'd ever been, and I was drinking cough syrup in hopes for even the slightest bit of relief, out of the house for 14 hours at a time, sometimes falling asleep at my computer after writing 200 words. What an awful and terribly exhausting month, but I did it. Maybe I did it just to boast, but whatever the reason, it was done.

This year, I had no outline and just a vague idea of where I was going based on what was written in my first part. 50k in 15 day. FIFTEEN DAYS. I felt on top of the world, and tonight I capped it off with the last 2,000 words, totaling the two parts together for a gloriously beautiful 106,500 words, and nearly 350 pages of sexually confused vampire goodness.

I wonder what's in store for next year. I wonder what I'll write about, and I wonder if I could do 100,00 words in a month. I wonder if I'll want to do it next year, and I wonder what the editing process for such a long book as this one will be like.

The adventures of writing are adventures like no other. The fact that I have written a total of 200,000+ words, and learned more about myself within those words than any other form of creativity makes me SO confused that not every single person on this planet does this at least once in their life.

Happy writing, everyone!

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