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zen habits: Fifty. Thousand. WORDS!!!!!! I did it!!!!!

Thursday, November 30, 2006

Fifty. Thousand. WORDS!!!!!! I did it!!!!!


I can't believe I did it. As I posted yesterday, I entered NaNoWriMo for the first time this year, and fell way behind. I was 19,000 words behind with three days left, 13,000 words behind with two days left, and at 3:30 a.m. this morning I woke up with 6,000 words to write before midnight. Well, I knew I could do it, so of course I procrastinated.

But about an hour ago, I was within sight of the finish line, and I sprinted triumphantly to the end! I made it! I went to the NaNo site, uploaded my novel, and was congratulated on winning! I got a cool winners certificate to download and print out, and a nice winner's icon to display on this site, which I will proudly leave in the left sidebar for as long as people will stand it.

Really, my novel isn't done. I reached the 50K word goal, which is exhilarating, but I probably have another 20K to go to the end. And then, I take this crappy first draft, which is what it really is, and I have to revise. And revise. Until I like it. And then I'll decide what to do with it -- I hope it'll be good enough to send to a publisher, but I can't tell yet. Ask me in a few months.

I hope to continue the habit of writing every morning, at least 500-1000 words a day, for the rest of my life. I will wake up tomorrow morning and write. I won't write on Sunday, because that's my first marathon!

Which brings me to the other point of this post: in the span of a few days, I will accomplish two of my life's major goals: to run a marathon, and to write a novel. I will probably have done both very crappily, but that's not the point, is it? I am awed by my accomplishments this week.

Now to carry it on to 2007.

Digg!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congratulations. What order did you put them in? I do hope they are worth reading.

Leo said...

Unforunately, they're not. I tried putting them in alphabetical order, but gave up after Balsam. If I ever get them in a fairly readable order, I will surely notify the world through this website. :)

Anonymous said...

Congrats! I was right there along side you in 2006. I also NaNo'ed in 2005. Nothing quite like it. Well done!

Leo said...

Thanks Travis! And congrats on both your successes. I'm sure each year brought an amazing feeling of accomplishment, as it did for me.