I lost.

I know it's probably cold comfort coming from someone with a purple bar, but I admire everyone who even undertook the race this year. I think you should congratulate yourself for the effort you were able to put out there.

*passes some brandy to go in that coffee*

Last year was my first year doing Nano and I only made it to 20,003 words... I still considered myself a winner because I fell in love with writing again, and it got me writing for the first time in 6 or 7 years...

So do not let the wordcount dictate whether you are a winner or loser.... let the results dictate it.

well, heres to what we DID accomplish! i mean, it took SOME effort...
school gets in the way of freaking everything...gr..
next year. i SWEAR i will WIN!!

Yeah, me too. It was fun making a final sprint at the end anyway just to see how far I could make it. I've still got 45 minutes, but I'm way too tired to write any more of my story.

I think your statement sums up my feelings this year. I had let my writing time just fritter away for the most part this year and when NaNo came around I decided to give it a go. I didn't win but I did make a good start on the book I want to finish. I was feeling a little low a day or so ago when I realized I was not anywhere near the goal and another friend said - Hey at least you tried. She was right, I tried. I will try again next year and I will realize that I need to make an effort all year to hone my skills. I want to be published and that means I need to keep trying.

Congrats to all of us - winners and those who "Tried".

21k still ain't easy to do. Maybe its not the NaNoWriMo bar that has been set, but to write that much is impressive and you should still be proud of yourself for that. Theres novellas shorter than as many words as you wrote.

Next year, if I so much as mention doing anything remotely high-concept (like writing my whole novel on index cards) just punch me in the head until I buy a laptop.

On the plus side, tomorrow I get to wake up and... work on my other novel that I haven't touched for a month. Ahh, the joys of actually trying to do this lunacy for a living.

You started it; You put effort into it. You should think of yourself as a winner, especially for thinking about next year's Nano!

We came, we wrote, and we lost. But at least now we all have some lovely partially-written novels to admire. I hope everyone had a lovely time writing their novels, congratulations to those who got 50,000 words, and to those who didn't. =) Until next November, -llammalord

I think it's awesome that people even TRY to do Nano... Even if your story is a thousand words, it's still a lot more than most anyone else will ever write toward a novel.

Hooray, people that aren't afraid to try!

Hey, I lost on my first year- you got farther than I did. Next year, you'll win. Remember to sacrifice the needs of friends and family :)

i agree w/ every one here. setting out to do it, and accomplishing anything at all IS winning. you've add 20+k words of fiction to the world :o) you contributed 20k to the total word count. you ROCK for trying. think about how many people didn't try because they were afraid of "not winning". the first year i heard about nano (04) i didn't do it because i didn't think i COULD do it. by the middle of november i wish i'd at least tried. you at least tried!!

i lost too. I was so disappointed. I was so confident I would win that I just...man...all my friends know about it and probably will make jokes outta it.

But at least it wasn't too bad a gap. About 17,606 words. I was sorely tempted to push back my time zone so i could get more words...but...the friends that expect honesty would want true honesty.

So i remain honest. *sighs*

But i wish I won.

I know everybody's a winner but...eh.

I think that anybody who actually tried and made an effort and wrote more than one word is a winner. There is always next year!

Another winner at loosing here!

I may have lost miserably but i won more than could be imagined. I won the start of a therapeutic journal trip down the path to the passing of two of my dogs and even though its terribly sad, I would not change a moment of the month of November - except maybe have the test results mixed up with some other dogs, but thats the universe. And over the course of the year and if i'm truly lucky maybe two years my journal will grow and the memories will fill in the adventures we had - like trips to the beach...and dog parks...

And remember if it doesn't kill you it makes you stronger so next year we'll all be kickin' word arse during the month of November cuz we have an entire year to gain our strength, regroup, train and pump some lead - pencils that is.

So really we didn't loose - we won

janet

Well, I sure as hell tried, and even if I didn't get halfway (which had been my revised goal) I still wrote a HELL of a lot - much, much more than I could usually get written in a month!

I personally don't get why they call it "winning" NaNoWriMo, because I don't think that writing 50,000 words of (what can be) crap can be considered a win, and not reaching that goal but getting something written doesn't seem like a loss. Even if I'm nowhere near the end of my story (in fact, at 24k the storyline is only JUST getting set into motion!) I've still begun it and gotten somewhere, which I had been putting off doing for ages, and I'm glad for it!

I may have lost this particular contest, but I think that in the long run I've really gained a lot from it. ^^

~Psychic

but the hurt feels better than cheating; you could have faked it, but you choose to be honest, good for everyone. And some of us wrote crap, and we knew it, but plowed through boring scenes with long, overdone descriptions anyway, You choose the higher road and probably wrote better.

Well, I didn't make it to 50,000 words. My 'official' count is 17,011, but I got 17,568. I didn't realize my laptop's clock was slow, so when I tried to make a lost update on my word count, it was just a few minutes too late. Grr. Oh well. I know have a start on a story I really like. Of course, 4600 of my words will be deleted because they don't fit with the story anymore. Just this past Wednesday my story decided it's own course and I poured out 2300 words that night. Today, I poured out just over 10,000! I can't believe I wrote that many words in one day!

So, I lost NaNoWriMo. I feel great because now I have a story started that I absolutely love and I proved to myself that I CAN write! 10,000 words today! I can't believe it. I will definitely be trying again next year, whether I have internet access or not.

Now I am going to get some coffee, browse these here forums for a bit, then find something to read until I wind down enough to go to bed.

Another loser, although I can't feel bad about it. I've done this so many times, and have never (although some years I've been closer than others) managed to pull off a win.

I work full time, and am also a full time writing grad student, none of the words of which did I use for this piece. All told, I know I *wrote* well over 50,000 words this month, but I didn't plagerize myself. My nano words were just that 30,000 words of one story, that I started Nov1, and ended on Nov30.

I got five hours of sleep a night in *October*, so I've had an average of much less than that this month... some of what I wrote, I did it with my eyes closed (no joke). But I tried, and kept going, even when I didn't think I had anything left in me for the day. I call that a win.

And who knows... I might have been able to have pulled out a winning week this week, if my boss hadn't made me work overtime and my school having an extra two hour lecture I had to attend. Are those excuses? Maybe. But I did the best I could with the situation I had. And I'll be back (again) next year.

I'll raise a glass to anybody who even attempted NaNo, whether they won or not. It took a lot of courage and optimism to even try, so I salute you! And think of it this way: those of you who didn't 'win' still wrote ten thousand, twenty thousand, or thirty thousand words in a month. That's a lot! That's certainly more than most people ever write in a month, and it's a good start on your novel. So pat yourselves on the back, and be proud of yourselves for what you DID do!

I lost too... *cries* And now that the word count validator is officially over, I feel no reason to continue with my novel... but I am comforted in the fact that this is the most I've written in any story I've ever created :) So it's at least one step to a better future in writing.

Cheers.

aw crap, I accidentally posted that like, four times... sorry everybody...

Yep. so did I - and I feel even worse coz my bar shows less words than I actually ended up making (19.993 in total) because I missed getting my stuff into the word validator.

But I am proud of myself for even trying because I had an awful lot on for November this year and what I have written is really pretty good if I say so myself. Plus all this has given me the confidence to start entering short story and poetry comps and so on and that's a big achievement for me!!

I think everyone who even tried is a winner, 50K or not!

*joins party*

(i vote we say this convo is taking place around a big blazing and comforting campfire with vegan s'mores and cozy blankets and hot cider and all those other comforting things and make it the "I lost but I won" thread, rather than the somewhat negative "I lost" title? its making me feel crappy...)

i lost, its my fault, i didnt finish my wordcount.

BUT

Ive had writers block since february, and my final word count was 12,094 though when i gave up i wasnt connected to the internet, so i never uploaded it... anyway. ive had writers block, so i wrote about twelve times more than ive been able to write in months.

no, i didnt make it to 50,000, and no i wont get a happy little certificate, but i made it to 12094 words, which is about 12094 words more than i thought i would, so i say i won, and i say that anyone else in the same boat as me won as well, and even if we dont get certificates, we get the self satisfation of knowing that we wrote something that was completely original, even if it was only two sentences (<-- run on sentence). during the month of november we wrote something that no one had ever written before, and i say thats something to be proud of.

I know how just how that feels. I first tried to do NaNoWriMo in 2002 and got, I don't know, maybe 1000 words. I tried (and failed) it the next year because it was fun the first time, but got maybe 200 words that year. I was disappointed in myself, but I hadn't really put that much work into it, so it didn't seem like a big deal.

Then came 2004. In 2004 I got really excited about a story that I started writing. Too bad that happened on the 7th! But I decided to try and go for it anyway. I put a lot of work into my story, and I became much more invested in it. I wanted desperately to win, but time and school got in the way. On November 30th I wrote 10,000 words (I have no idea how), but made it only to 40,000 by 11pm. There was pretty much no hope of finishing in time.

I felt terrible. I loved my story, but I had LOST NaNo, and after putting that much work into it, it was a huge disappointment. About a week after, though, I felt much better about my attempt. Sure, I hadn't finished---but I'd written way more on a story than I ever thought I could, in a shorter time than I ever thought I could. Plus, it was a story I liked, and some parts of that crazy month had been tons of fun. Worth another try, I decided.

Well, I didn't make it next year, either, but this year I FINALLY MADE IT. After five failed attempts, I have finally written a novel, and damn it feels good.

So DON'T GIVE UP NOW. Trust me, it's way worth it. It just feels that much better when you finally get there. You CAN do it, eventually, and your accomplishment this month, despite not winning? Huge. Don't beat yourself up for writing over 21000 words! You're a winner for writing that much! Congratulations.

*raises glass*

I would have won, but I couldn't get online yesterday to validate it. I've got over 57,000 words, I just couldn't get them online. So I lost.

I'd like to congratulate those of you who 'lost' but actually started. From what I understand, there are many NaNo'ers who never even start.

And I have to say this -- I am not in school. I don't have papers and tests and other stuff keeping me from writing. I'm a wife and a mother and I work...but I think to write a novel while going to school is immensely harder than doing what I do.

I raise my mug of coffee to all of you.

Awesome job!

No you didn't. You won! You just didn't get third party verification. You can still say that YOU wrote over 50k in a month!

Think of all of the things you learned from this event. My writing has improved so much since I started NaNo, and I didn't make it to 50,000 either. The truth is, I didn't even see the novel I had truly set out to write until I actually sat down and started typing on the first day. I had all of these neat little character charts, plot lines, and setting notes. I had tried to force a vision that didn't seem real to me just to get a plot that I could work on, but when I started writing something so much more beautiful and intricate came out. I feel like a winner because by actually starting to write the story I had planned so completely in my mind, I got to meet a whole host of interesting and genuine characters. They didn't turn out anything like I had planned, so I had to redo my entire plot so it would fit who my characters were more. I now have a great start on a real novel, and even though I didn't make it by the end of November, the feeling of victory I will get when I write those last few words seems entirely tangible. Anyone who made an account here and wrote down some words, whether it be 50k or just 10, has gone so much further than those who just make a plan and say "I'll do it later."

The great thing about NaNo is that there is always next year!

The purple bar I have right now is there mainly because I lost last year, believe it or not. I won in 2005, and it felt amazing. Then last year, eh, I just fizzled. I tried, I wrote, but I lost focus and just didn't do it. And I didn't realize I would be as disappointed as I was. I tried to tell myself it was a stupid contest, that it really didn't matter, but the fact was it DID matter to me, a lot.

So, knowing how disappointed I was last year, I really committed to it this year. I lost steam in week 2, my dog died in week 3, but this last week I cranked out my last 20,000 words to win.

So my advice is to remember this feeling. It sucks. But next year, when you're in that second-week slump, and you're pitifully behind in week three, questioning your ability and asking yourself why you're even bothering, you'll think of what a let down it was not to win. you'll remember this feeling. And if you're like me, that will be exactly what you need to keep going.

I never would have known exactly how important NaNo was to me if I hadn't lost last year. It was a lesson to me! But I needed to lose in order to learn that lesson.