NaNo Postmortem
Hi guys!
That is my final NaNo 2008 word count, as of like, ten minutes ago. I AM AWESOME!
I have been playing this game for five years and never won before, okay? I'm really proud of myself. Let me have his post. If you want to hate, just scroll on by, okay? It's not hard, and I am not mean to you about your things unless you like Twilight, so just let me have this.
I probably could have gotten more done if I had pushed myself to write the daily minimum every day after making 50k, but I was tired and then it was Thanksgiving, so I kind of let it slide. Still, I hit 50k a week ago and wrote an additional 5.5k of NaNo and 3k of another story, so that's roughly 1.2k per day even after "winning" the contest. NOT TOO SHABBY.
That aside, um, I never thought I was actually going to hit 50k? In fact, I told quatredeathlady that I was leery of forcing her to sign up because I was sure she would plow through 50k and I'd still be dicking around with my introduction. I was beyond shocked to be the first of our trio to reach the goal.
I don't want to spend too much time waxing poetic on something that most the people reading this journal don't care about, but I think a big factor in my finishing was that I was working with a personal canon that I knew inside and out. It's something that I've been picking at for three years, so I generally knew the ins and outs of what I was doing. I didn't make an outline until I was bored at work about two weeks into NaNo, and I only rarely consulted it even after it existed. I changed a lot of things from the previously established "canon" and tweaked timelines. I edited some characters out and added some more (which caused a bit of a problem at one point), but this remained basically the same. I don't know if I could have hit 50k if I hadn't known my characters like they were my best friends, if I hadn't referenced these events a million, trillion times in the other things I've written.
But what I really, TRULY couldn't have gotten by without is the support from you guys. I know that a lot of you left comments, but I'm going to put quatredeathlady, ruecian, and inocciduous on the spot. The cheerleading, the attention to detail, and the encouragement from you three really made the experience a hundred times more wonderful than it would have been otherwise. You made me feel loved, but moreover, you made my CHARACTERS feel loved. Believe me, the comments that Alan wasn't being as big a dick as I feared after the scene where he and Dan have the confrontation in the grocery store TOTALLY made my night.
I couldn't have done it without you guys, truly.
Um, but generally, it was a pretty cool experience! I had fun! I mean, the write-in was AWESOME and all three of us have to do it again next year so we can have more! I'm looking forward to our anti-write-in this weekend :D
Also, I'm definitely going to keep going until I finish it! Maybe at a less frenetic pace, but I'm within spitting distance of finishing, I hope! I'm thinking, since it's December 1 and I am not breaking the advent tradition this year, that most of advent will be excerpts? Mixed with some fic, maybe? I'm going to think about it today and make a decision by tonight, obvs.
But... wow! It's over! It was fun, and I never thought I'd make it, but here I am! Yay!
How are you guys doing? How many of you made it? How did you do?
That is my final NaNo 2008 word count, as of like, ten minutes ago. I AM AWESOME!
I have been playing this game for five years and never won before, okay? I'm really proud of myself. Let me have his post. If you want to hate, just scroll on by, okay? It's not hard, and I am not mean to you about your things unless you like Twilight, so just let me have this.
I probably could have gotten more done if I had pushed myself to write the daily minimum every day after making 50k, but I was tired and then it was Thanksgiving, so I kind of let it slide. Still, I hit 50k a week ago and wrote an additional 5.5k of NaNo and 3k of another story, so that's roughly 1.2k per day even after "winning" the contest. NOT TOO SHABBY.
That aside, um, I never thought I was actually going to hit 50k? In fact, I told quatredeathlady that I was leery of forcing her to sign up because I was sure she would plow through 50k and I'd still be dicking around with my introduction. I was beyond shocked to be the first of our trio to reach the goal.
I don't want to spend too much time waxing poetic on something that most the people reading this journal don't care about, but I think a big factor in my finishing was that I was working with a personal canon that I knew inside and out. It's something that I've been picking at for three years, so I generally knew the ins and outs of what I was doing. I didn't make an outline until I was bored at work about two weeks into NaNo, and I only rarely consulted it even after it existed. I changed a lot of things from the previously established "canon" and tweaked timelines. I edited some characters out and added some more (which caused a bit of a problem at one point), but this remained basically the same. I don't know if I could have hit 50k if I hadn't known my characters like they were my best friends, if I hadn't referenced these events a million, trillion times in the other things I've written.
But what I really, TRULY couldn't have gotten by without is the support from you guys. I know that a lot of you left comments, but I'm going to put quatredeathlady, ruecian, and inocciduous on the spot. The cheerleading, the attention to detail, and the encouragement from you three really made the experience a hundred times more wonderful than it would have been otherwise. You made me feel loved, but moreover, you made my CHARACTERS feel loved. Believe me, the comments that Alan wasn't being as big a dick as I feared after the scene where he and Dan have the confrontation in the grocery store TOTALLY made my night.
I couldn't have done it without you guys, truly.
Um, but generally, it was a pretty cool experience! I had fun! I mean, the write-in was AWESOME and all three of us have to do it again next year so we can have more! I'm looking forward to our anti-write-in this weekend :D
Also, I'm definitely going to keep going until I finish it! Maybe at a less frenetic pace, but I'm within spitting distance of finishing, I hope! I'm thinking, since it's December 1 and I am not breaking the advent tradition this year, that most of advent will be excerpts? Mixed with some fic, maybe? I'm going to think about it today and make a decision by tonight, obvs.
But... wow! It's over! It was fun, and I never thought I'd make it, but here I am! Yay!
How are you guys doing? How many of you made it? How did you do?