NaNo Narcosis

This post is going out a little later than usual, I know, but it's not like anyone cares enough to look at my blog before I post "New blog post!" on Facebook and Twitter, anyway.  Between finishing projects, studying for finals, watching Netflix, and staring at the ceiling as my roommate played Assassin's Creed until 4:00 in the morning, I literally had no time to write so I apologize for my excuses.  I also apologize for the shortness of this post but after the verbosity of some of my earlier posts I don't think you'll mind too terribly much.  It's just that writing an entire novella in one month can make a person feel like they need respite from writing.

I won NaNoWriMo with a grand total of 50,068 words!  In more comprehensible terms, that's just over 90 pages in Microsoft Word, Times New Roman, 12-point font, one-inch margins, single spaced; or 175 pages double spaced -- the equivalent of 35, five-page papers.  Of course, when the only objective is writing as many words as possible, quality tends to be slightly less than that of a paper written entirely the night before it's due.  Still, it's 50,068 words I didn't have at the beginning of the November.  Not only did I meet my goal of surpassing last year's word count that plateaued at 40,000 words, but I actually like my story!  This surprised me more than anything.  I'm the type of person that once I set my mind to accomplishing a task or goal there are very few things that can prevent me from doing so, so I knew I could win; it was just a matter of how much I wanted to kill myself by the end of the month.  Come November 30, I didn't want to kill myself.  Some of my characters may or may not have been so lucky.

Now that November's over, what's next?  Well, once I've had sufficient time to forget about my story, I'll let loose my inner editor and keel over backwards, stunned by the atrocious writing.  But that is what I've been looking forward to most since October 31.  I want to transform the raw, unfiltered ideas into a coherent story.  Who knows?  Maybe one day I'll even get it published.  But I won't get ahead of myself; all I can do is edit, revise, and become a better writer.

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No sonnet this week, I'm afraid.
To all my fellow college students, good luck on finals!
To everyone else, have a great week!  -NLD

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Unpublished material, ©2013 Neal Digre