Author Blog Post - The Results of my FIRST NaNoWriMo...

A month ago I was in my home office, updating my dry erase board calendar. I drew small black rectangles in the box of each day and convinced myself I could do it.

By it, I mean participate in my first NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). November was National Novel Writing Month and the goal is get 50,000 words written (average of 1700 words a day).

I made my own personal goal of just trying to write every day (even if I didn’t reach the 1700 word mark) and attempt to reach 50,000 words by the end of the month. I started off pretty good, and had some fantastic days (hello 4000+ words in one day!)

Midway through the month the weather changed and I got ill...

And missed one day. I’m not going to lie, I felt like a complete and utter failure. But I told myself, you know you made this goal to reach 50,000 and you are going to do it (let's just say wine was involved). 

I persevered. I pushed myself. I drank more wine.

And I met the goal! 

This month I worked on book three of my series The Halves of Us (THOU). I figured it was a good way to dive into writing the last book, and boy was it! But I also had some inspiration from dreams and worked on little side projects.

All in all I had 50,914 words written for THOU and 7,717 written on the side projects for a total of 58,631 during my first NaNoWriMo! 

Was it hard? YES. There were some days were I would look toward my home office and cringe knowing I had to go in there. (I know that sounds awful). But some days are hard...lets be real. 

But other days, I couldn't stop...maybe the lack of sleep and wine helped with creativity...who knows! 

Will I participate next year?  Eh, I won't decide that just yet. While this pushed me creatively, I don't know where I will be at this time next year (editing wise/writing wise). But that being said, I do recommend it...even if you set your own goals to just try and write every day.

I’m really proud of myself for sticking with it and writing almost every day (two days missed, one being sick and the other was Thanksgiving). 

Congrats to everyone who participated…now comes the hard part…editing!