SUI GENERIS punk rock bike shop home-brew art/craft love

NaNoWriMo: a winner is me

I wrote 50,000 words in 30 days (actually within 24 days). I wasn't doing too well with writing on week days, so I decided to use this holiday weekend for a marathon novel finish. My final count when I stopped to check around 2:25 this afternoon was 50,100 words.

Here's a fun graph that shows my total word count creeping up towards the 50k goal. The blue line represents the minimum average words/day needed to reach that goal by November 30. The red line is where I would be if I stayed on track with exactly 2,000 words per day. I finished precisely one day ahead of schedule.

The next graph charts my daily word count. I was all over the place! This is why it's a good idea to aim high. Even though I completely missed a couple of days, I had built up enough of a buffer that I never fell below that minimum line.

This was my fourth year doing NaNoWriMo. It is always kind of tedious most of the time, with brief flashes of inspiration, and a great feeling of accomplishment at the end. This was my most solid effort to date. I wasn't done telling the story when I hit the finish line, so I still have to write the finale of my novel, and maybe one day I'll even edit this one into a legible first draft. Until then, please enjoy the photo journal (click to see all posts for the month of November and read from the bottom up for a visual approximation of my story).

7 comments:

E. McPan said...

They always get the girl in the end, don't they? I was hoping for something super spectacular after all those teasing pictures.

Sui Generis said...

My female lead is the real star character, so in this case, she gets the boy in the end.

I like action so there's a big future robot battle at the climax. But, I couldn't find a good Flickr photo for that. So here you go: this super spectacular ending photo is just for you!

E. McPan said...

HAHAHAHAH! I highly approve of the ending. Two thumbs up!

Jhenn said...

Can we trade when I finish!!

Sui Generis said...

Jhenn: that's the deal! As soon as you get your 50,000 words down, we can do a rough draft exchange.

jenna said...

i hate november

The Goodfellas said...

i thought it looked like a happy ending at first, but upon closer inspection, the guy kissing the girl isn't the same guy shown as your "lead character"... which leads me to assume that your lead character was killed off (forgot to wear his gas-mask?) and the girl ended up with his nemesis? shocking, truly shocking.

ps. congrats. :) still waiting to read your first one you know! (do you remember, you told me i got to read it? hm?)