The biggest surprise of Nanowrimo

Now that it's 11 a.m. on the 30th of November, and I'm 52,300 or so words into my novel, I'm pleased to report that I am a winner! And in more good news: I didn't fall apart along the way. In fact, the entire experience of writing 50,000 words in a month has been astonishingly pain-free. I've been able to sit down at the computer and write just about every day, and every day I've come up with something worth exploring. I may have to do some heavy lifting and chopping and reorganizing later, but there's a lot to work with and it wasn't so hard to generate it, which is a completely thrilling discovery.

At the table two nights ago, after I had posted my winning total word count and went to the movies, my sweetie asked, what are you thinking? And I said I have this little chant going through my head at all times saying, "You did it! You did it!"

The other one that runs through my mind often is "If I had known it was as easy as setting a goal and then trying to achieve that goal, I would have done it years ago." But I keep trying to cut myself some slack and tell myself that I would not have been ready then. Or maybe I would have but I didn't do it then and I am ready and able now. That's the real point. Being here, now, and not worrying about what might have happened.

So here I am with the first 50,000-and-some words of a novel. I'm just going to keep writing the kind of stuff I want to read and hoping that there are other readers like me out there.