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.