I did it.
I won NaNoWriMo.
What does that mean, exactly? No glitter fell at my feet the moment I crossed 50,000 words. No trumpets blared, no small man offering me the keys to the city appeared. No angels appeared, flouting at my feet, their blinding and terrible beauty forcing mine wits to evacuate mine mind.
No, it was more simple than that. I sat at work, the day after Thanksgiving, writing away. Happy to have a day where no phone calls or students came in to interrupt. I noticed, after writing almost 5,000 words on the day, that I was a mere 20 words away from the goal. I finished two more sentences and ended up at 50,006 words. I saved my file, uploaded it to dropbox, e-mailed the document to myself, closed Pages (I did all of my writing on the iPad), and sat back. Content. I did it.
50,000 words in a month. In less than a month, actually. I had several days to spare.
I have not opened my NaNo writings since. I left several stories unfinished, but I will come back. After the writing has had time to sit, and I've had time to ruminate upon what I learned in November, I will go back to it, and I will finish. That I can finish is not a worry. I wrote 50,000 words in a month.
I finally think of myself as a writer.
I have several ideas I've started on. One is about a guy named Stranger (placeholder name; I'm waiting for a name that sings to me), chasing after another guy. Thsi story is my attemptt o write something like Stephen King's Gunslinger. Just to write something different in another style, after so much talking about myself.
The other is my Valkyrie story. I need more time with that, but it never leaves my mind.
And, as always, Darkness Falls. I'm going to go back and discover more about my characters. It's the reason I fell flat last year. But I'm going to go back and talk to all of them. Cain's voice gets stronger in my head the more I think about the story.
I a pleased with myself. I would say I can't wait for next year, but I don't need NaNo to get me to write a novel. I realize now I can do it myself.
But I'll do it again next year, anyway.
