eke! eke!

Hi there Taras. Sorry, I haven't been around here much lately. :( Didn't make it to a single meeting, and it doesn't look like I'll be able to make it to the wrap party either. I haven't even had time to change the title of my novel to something more accurate to what the plot became in the end, or buy present for my boyfriend's birthday two days ago.

Stopped writing my NaNovel earlier this week in favour of finishing my contract on time, after I calculated that I would need to write for 7 hours every day to catch up to 50K. Due to the contract, and a 3-month-old cold that makes me sleepy at weird hours (ei, all the time except for about 3 hours/day), I simply didn't have 7 hours. It sucks to fall back on that excuse, but at that point it just wasn't physically possible for me, coffee or no coffee.

What saddens me most though, other than not seeing/meeting the gang in person this year, is that I think I've reached the half-way mark as far as word-count goes; this was my secondary goal in view of my job. But I've been hand-writing everything and then re-typing it all to find out the final word count and create an editable copy. I can type 250 words (1 page on average) in 4 minutes, but I've got about 25 untyped pages and I'd really rather take that couple hours to write or work or sleep, when it comes right down to it. So I stopped. Next year, I really have to convince myself that I can do without pen and paper.

But you know what, and this is the beauty of NaNoWriMo: I learned something important again this year, even though I didn't reach 50K. It's one of those mental breakthroughs a person has to figure out for themselves even when they've read about it in a hundred how-to-write books. The past two years, I learned I could reach 50K in one month. And how to defend my plot from invading vampires. This year, I reached a kind of deeper understanding of what writing this first draft is really about, for me at least. Oh, and what it means to work from home, as a writer of fiction or whatever else. (I quit my subscription to World of Warcraft back in October, just ripped it from my dopamine receptors right before it vanquished whatever scraps discipline I had left. That sort of says it all.)

I'm sorry, this is getting a bit long. It's late, and I can't sleep and should be working, I haven't talked to your or the rest of the gang in forever, so of course I'm going to go on for too long in a post.

I guess the last thing I want to share is that I really really missed the Author Search this year (I even spent part of November trying to compose a requiem for it). I know it came back, but by then it was too late and I never did find out if it could sort all the Montreal writers by Word Count. It was one of my main motivational tools the past two years; I always sorted everybody by current Word Count and strove to remain on that first page, as close to the top as possible. Not having Author Search around really threw me for a loop in the beginning, and by the time I realized that it was too late to compensate properly.

Anyway, I'm a bit disappointed but feel far from defeated. Even without reaching 50K I've reached that blessed point in November when I can truly make myself believe I will keep writing regularly (um, more regularly) in December and the rest of next year. If I can hold on to that belief long enough, it might just come true.

Congradulations on your own 50K, Taras! It was a pleasure to follow your strong finish after the slow start. :D I can say it cheered me up quite a bit.

Good God, I wrote way too much. Sorry. The post didn't look nearly as long in the Preview. Ah well. I guess that's all the stuff I would have expressed if I'd managed to show up to any of the meetings.

Okay.... Closing the browser now.

That's an awesome post. People ask me why I do this every year. I tell them because I learn something every year.

> It was a pleasure to follow your strong finish after the slow start.

What slow start? I had 'em right where I wanted 'em.

> I can say it cheered me up quite a bit.

Well, good. And thanks. By the way, I love my novel this year.

> I haven't talked to your or the rest of the gang in forever, so of course I'm going to go on for too long in a post.

And here I was thinking, because I miss ya, that it was too short.

t!