And done.
Whew! November was exactly as much of a wreck at work as I thought it would be. More so, even. But I stuck with it, and I actually managed to finish. Not just the 50,000 words to win NaNoWriMo, but actually finished the novel. It's short (way short), and I've got some issues to fix, but that makes two novels finished this year. In thirteen months, I've written two complete novels, and I'm feeling pretty good right now. Sometimes, it really is just knowing you can do it.
Which applies to more than just finishing novels. My writing speed shot up this month, mostly because I blasted through a barrier I hadn't even realized I'd made for myself. Six pages per hour was fast to me. How can anyone write faster than that? Sure there are a few, but there are also people who can run a mile in four minutes. It's not exactly something the average person should strive for. THen I did my first NaNo sprint, where you just write as fast as you can for ten minutes, and did almost two pages. That comes out to a little under eleven pages an hour. Compare that to my previous record of seven and a half. It wasn't a fluke, either, and it wasn't just during sprints. My top ten writing speeds were all during NaNo; I have to go all the way out to the top thirty before I find a writing session prior to November.
Weird to realize what a limit I was putting on myself. I type plenty fast, so why did I think I couldn't consistently write more than seven pages in an hour?
All in all, despite the stress, a damn fine month. There were a couple of places where I really did want to give up. The end of last week was a close call, after too many crises had gotten between me and writing. I was 7,850 words behind on Friday, with less than ten days to go. And now I'm done.
Whew!