Well, I crossed the 50K finish line, but I still need to finish the last story in the Di/Mart story arc. It should be wrapped up in no more than 5,000 words or so.
Thank you very much, Ruth and Susi, for your kind words, but please trust me, the later stories are pretty ghastly. I know they are going to need to be retooled. As I was writing them, I knew they were going to need very heavy editing at the very least. But I was trying to get the backbone down and get to 50K words, so I didn't worry about it too much. But the first story, with the three girls first heading off to college ("Closing Time") actually shouldn't need too much work, comparatively, so I am feeling a lot better about that one.
And borrowing the work laptop SAVED MY LIFE! Well, it saved my novel's life anyway. I'm not sure I could have been so disciplined if I had had to sit in front of my computer upstairs while Matt was downstairs, or sat on my parents' computer while everyone was downstairs, and I certainly would not have gotten the 4,000 or so words that I did while I was traveling.
I definitely want a laptop before next year's NaNo! *g*
As the owner of a now defect laptop, I'd recommend to buy one with a good cooling. I set our laptop on fire two times!
I can relate to writing the backbone of the story and worrying about making it better afterwards. I have the backbones of at least three stories sitting on my harddrive, but am too lazy to do the re-writing. *g*
Woohoo!!! Well done, Dana!