NaNoWriMo - post-mortem

At the end of October, I wrote a post about NaNoWriMo and my plans for it. To sum it up, I was planning to write 1,000 words daily in November, including during the weekends.

Now the month of November is over so let's see how it went. Did I reach my goal? Yes. On November 29, I had 31k done so I took the last day of Nano off. :P I didn't write only one Sunday, but I didn't fall behind with the word count because I had already written an extra 1k. The main goal was 30k with hopes to get to 35k. I didn't get to the 35k, but that's okay. The writing flew smoothly with no major roadblocks, even if I only had about half of the plot figured out when I started. 35k was a tentative margin, however, I don't feel like I reached the end yet. There are another two major events that still need to happen in the story so probably another 30k. It turns out it's a novel after all. Oh, well ... I guess the readers will stop complaining about my stories being too short when they expected full novels instead of novellas.

What did I learned? I can do it, obviously, but I already knew that. Will I do it again another time in November? Not a chance! November is the worst month for this as far as I'm concerned, coming in second only after Euros and Worlds. When I decided to do the Nano, I hadn't taken in consideration the fact that the skating Grand Prix events were in full swing and Eurosport planned on airing all of the competitions during the weekends. So in between watching skating on TV and running the AS site, getting the word count done too was pretty stressful. On top of all, my pc monitor broke and for a week I had to work with a borrowed one. Not fun.

But there are some positive aspects too. I have a new story in the works that I hope to finish by the end of the year. I like the characters and the world I created. What I don't like so  much is that I keep getting ideas for sequels. I'll have to do something about that, or I'll get stuck with them for another year. Okay, the truth is I have an idea of how to handle the issue, but I'm not ready to divulge it yet. ;)

So ... plans for December. I'll be busy with promoting Order Restored so I'll try to keep a light schedule: finish the story or get as close to the end as possible, and come up with some kick-ass cover(s) somehow. Wish me luck!