Winner! The NaNoWriMo 2011 prize is on the wall!

At 10:45 pm, Nov. 23 I finished my NaNoWriMo 2011 novel with over 56,000 words. About 8:09 am cst I collected my 2011-Winner-Certificate

Before I  went to bed Wednesday night, I had completed a 23 day writing marathon that I had doubts about at the outset. The minimum daily average of words to reach the prize is 1667. At the starting line, I had my eye on 2000 words per day knowing there would be days when little writing time was available. In the end, I averaged 2443.5 words.

How did that happen? In my last post on Oct. 29 I commented, “I am not comfortable writing fast.  I am basically a plodding writer who constantly goes back to change, correct or rethink what I’ve written…”

What I did was follow the advice of the NaNoWriMo team and the experienced writers of the pep talks. In my case, I started off with a couple of characters starting on a journey west in search of truth. Not “On the Road,’ but a more subdued late ’40s search.When I knelt down at the starting line my mind was focused straight down the track. I sprinted for the first day, seven hours, and reached just under 2200 words. I would like to say I never looked back, but when you are writing in Word, those squiggly green and red lines are hard to ignore. However, I found that what I’ll call inspiration comes in short bursts. That gave me time to catch my breath and clean up the squiggles.This meant that 23 days later, I had a readable novel.

This experience was fantastic! It was everything the NaNoWriMo folks promised. I don’t know why I’m surprised. Thousands upon thousands of people have participated in the past and are participating this year. The whole point though is that, while you are doing it with thousands, you are really just doing it by yourself. It is like the marathon runner – the crowds cheer him on, but he has to take each one of those steps that take him 26 miles 385 yards to the finish line by himself.

I can’t wait ’til next November. But, what write to until then?