Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

That's right, ya'll.
It's the 27th day of November, a full three days ahead of schedule, and I've finished NaNoWriMo. I've written 50,052 words in 27 days, give or take a couple days where I wrote nothing at all and then made up for it with 3K sprints (and, today, a 5K sprint).

It's been a crazy whirlwind of a month- some days. I'd love to get introspective, but I'm saving that for later (I have a post written out already, don't you worry). Right now I just want to brag and maybe do a little dance. Or, I would, if I wasn't so tired.

Here's my month, boiled down to some fancy stats provided by the NaNoWriMo website. I've been looking at that motherfucking bar graph all month, wishing it was a line graph because the little stunted bars that failed to reach the goal line pissed me off so much.

I guess the bars that rise majestically above it, though, make up for that.

As you can see I wrote the bare minimum for awhile as I got back in the swing of writing. The first day I struggled insanely, barely met the goal, allowed fleeting thoughts of giving up to swirl around. But then around day 10 I hit my groove, and suddenly writing 1,667 words a day seemed ridiculously easy. Indeed, the only problems that arose were the days when I was absolutely too busy to write a word- happened more often than I remember- and then I was in a hole for the next day.

The last week, fittingly, was the most hectic, because of the two days I mentioned before that I skipped. I wrote about 2K a day on average to catch up, and over the past few days I've been a maniac; 3K, 3K, 5K, finish. And what a finish.

The 50,000th word was "I'm", which is super lame, but before I added some more words to beef up a confusing sentence it was "like" which was terrible. That means nothing, though, because I edit as I go and I am very likely to go back and add a scene or two if I think I missed something, even before I'm finished writing the plot.

So where do I go from here? Well, I'm going to take a well-deserved break for a couple of days to finish my college essays, and then I'm getting right back on that Word document, which has been open perennially. I don't think I'll close it. I still have probably another 50K to go before the book is finished; to be honest, I haven't got a definitive middle picked out yet, so I could spool it out for hundreds of pages if I wish. I just might, if only to make the editing process even more hellish.

And then there's editing, and then there's a finished product, hopefully, eventually. There's still a long road to travel and then retrace my steps and cut down the weeds that grow along the way, but I've got nice-ass hiking boots and a stick and everything so I'm all set and rearing to go, and also ready to retire this hiking metaphor because seriously, who hikes? Ew, nature.

I'll see you all in a day probably because now I'm addicted to writing.

SUCCESSFULLY YOURS,

ABBY
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!