Gosh it's been ages since I popped over here! I was at my parents' house for nine days (well, seven of nine days), and they don't have Internet access. Well, they do, but it's sloooooow dial-up, so I totally don't count it. *g* For two days I was at my sister's house (I can't help it; it will ALWAYS be my sister's house in my mind) and had Internet access, but I also did a lot of running around, taking the kids to school, picking them up, shopping with my mom, AND had three work deadlines fall during that time, so blogging, even though I was at a house with Internet access, fell by the wayside.
So, I hit 50K on November 29. I looked at my past spreadsheets--the earliest I've hit it was my first year, on November 20, and that year I finished the novel, which clocked in around 64K words, by November 25. Last year I came close to my first year, hitting 50K on November 21. The latest I've hit 50K (until this year) is November 27. Usually, I seem to fall around the 24th or 25th.
I was panicking myself this year! I wasn't even going to write on the 29th this year, resigning myself to winning on the *gulp* last day. I had had a 101 degree fever for a couple of days, hadn't slept, felt rotten, stupidly drove from my parents' house to my house while feeling this way, and was exhausted and in no mood to write. Then, because I took a long nap during the day, I couldn't sleep that night. The Tylenol kicked in. And at 10 pm Sunday night, I decided I felt well enough to write, and I didn't want to miss that window, so I wrote the last 3K+ words I needed to say I finished *before* the last day. Whew! Then on the 30th, I wrote 2+K more to officially finish the novel. I don't really feel like I've won unless I finish the novel, not just hit 50K. After all, it is National NOVEL Writing Month, not National Write 50K Words Month.
This year was a weird year for me. I'd say that 80% of the days I wrote (which was every day except for one), I didn't start writing before 10 pm, many times not before 10:30 pm, and on two memorable occasions, not until 11:30 pm. The 20% of days I didn't start writing that late were because I attended write-ins. I probably wouldn't have written before 10 pm those days had it not been for the write-ins. I don't know why I was such a night-owl writer this year. I have found that every NaNo I do takes on a "personality" of its own, and I guess this year's personality was "Night Owl".
Tonight is the Jix Virtual TGIO Party and tomorrow is the regional TGIO Party. So sad to say good-bye to the craziness, but so ready for off-season activities--meetups in Pinconning and Bay City, editing the stories I've finally written after five or six years of planning, and so on.
Congrats to everyone who won NaNo, met their goals, or wrote even one more word than they would have without NaNo!
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