NaNoWriMo: Achieved!
It’s the 29th November, and I finally hit 50,000 words. Whoo-hoo!
It’s such a relief. I have been struggling all week, and my wordcount graph reflects that. Work has been nuts, with the new guy starting – I had to be in charge of inducting him and training him – and interviewing another candidate for the new vacancy we’ve been allowed to recruit for. And I had a deadline to meet on Friday, which involved much squinting at complicated spreadsheets and trying to work out if all the figures were correct.
On top of that, I’ve been out a lot and, of course, the CFS has been biting down hard. I wound up collapsing on Friday night and giving myself the night off, even though I had barely written anything the day before (due to an unplanned evening at the folks’ place, thanks to breaking trains and a dad who needed a lift home).
Luckily, the write-ins have been great for my productivity. I entered the weekend with 8k to go – not exactly ideal, but not horrific either – and wound up doing almost 4k at yesterday’s write-in. Today, I managed to get my head down and push through those last few posts to hit 50k just after 6pm.
Aaaaand, relax.
In all of my previous NaNo adventures, I have hit the target with a week or more to go. The first year, I petered out and coasted through the last week, ending on about 56k, just glad I got through it all. Last year, I was determined to get to the end of the story and powered on through to almost 70k. This year, I’m just glad I made it at all. This really is a lot closer to the bone than I like to cut things!
I guess it’s a symptom of how my year has been. More than once I’ve been up late, desperately trying to focus on an Apocalypse Blog post properly so that I can get it edited, and then post it before I fell into bed. Once, I had to backdate the time slightly to squeeze it into the previous day, as it was almost 1am when it was finally going up. (One lovely reader noticed! Despite my sneaky fiddling with the posting time. It’s so good to know people are paying attention!)
I wish I could take a break now. But not yet! NaNo might be finished, but AB isn’t, not quite.
I’m about halfway through December. Only a couple of weeks’ worth of posts, and then I’m finished. I have tomorrow off work, to rest and recover from everything, so I plan to spend that editing the first half of December. Then I can focus on getting the last half of the month written, polished up and posted.
Almost there. Almost done. I can’t wait. I want to see the whole story, hold it in my hands as a complete thing. I’m looking forward to telling everyone: I did it. I got to the end, I got through a whole year and a long, winding story.
For tonight, though, I’m going to put my feet up, feel good about myself, and look forward with hope. It has been hard work, but it’s all working out nicely. That makes it worth it.
Svenja says:
Congrats on finishing! You continue to amaze me. I still read the AB every day, although I’ve been a bit lax in commenting on this blog recently (I blame NaNo). But, it’s great to hear that you got through it and that things are going well for you! I really can’t wait to read to the end of the story – not that I wish it was over, but it’s so exciting, I want to know what happens! 😀
December 4th, 2009 at 1:39 am
Mel says:
Thanks, Svenja! 🙂 Glad you’re still enjoying it. I can’t wait to see what happens at the end too! (Okay, I have it mostly planned out, but only mostly. 😉 )
December 4th, 2009 at 10:54 pm