NaNoWriMo Winners Celebrate the Season

Today is Black Friday which has nothing to do with Good Friday even although Wikipedia seems to want to mention both in one mouthful. All Black Friday has to do with religion is that it's the official beginning of the Christmas holiday shopping season.

Friday is Challah Day

Thanks to the weather gods we were able to make it to our friends' house for Thanksgiving. The arctic storm that crippled most of greater Seattle had us running a high cabin fever after nearly four days spent at our own home. While I feel no urge to participate in Black Friday shopping sprees (which can start as early as 3:00 a.m.), I did wake up at 4:00 a.m. and a friend who lives nearby, noted that his toddler woke up at 4:40 a.m. babbling non-stop until 11:00. Makes you wonder what's in the air.

You may have noticed I rely heavily on html links to explain whatever strange or foreign notions I introduce in my posts. This of course to cut down on the number of words I have to type myself. Economy is a cherished word when it comes down to running a message home. Editors, especially those who have limited funds/ space love contributors who know how to be concise.

That you may and can use more words than strictly necessary, as is the case when writing a first draft for a novel, can be a surprising notion for well trained journalists. But when will they ever experience such liberating moments? The answer to that question is November. Participants in the National Novel Writing Month, the so called NaNo Writers, don't have to deal with the restrictions of word count, at least not on the low side. The more words you type, the merrier. After all, the aim is to write 50,000 within a 30-day frame. In order to make the score by November 30th a writer has to produce 1,667 words per day.

Never thought I could write a novel in a month, but November 21st marks the day when I scored my 50K. Since I wasn't finished with my story, I kept on writing. The day before Thanksgiving I used Scrivener to compile my 48 sections into one long Word document, which I scrambled and uploaded at the NaNoWriMo site for word verification. On Thanksgiving my green word count bar turned purple with 59,484 words (at the time) the DutchessAbroad was a  or as my number one supporter and fan said "his number one weener". I'm pretty sure he means Wiener cause a weener is a looser, but then, I'm the writer in our family, he's the musician. As long as he sings his songs for me, I won't hold it against him.

To be honest, I became hooked on writing an average of 2288 words a day, so much better than my earlier 500 word count average. So I continued joining my Online NaNoWriMo Warrior friends to continue hammering out the words, even on Thanksgiving day.

Today, on Black Friday however, I set down for the 10 a.m. Word War and instead of writing new material, I started reading my manuscript. I know there's still a lot of work ahead of me, editing, rewrite or revision, moving scenes around, filling in, and a lot of cutting. Still, I know I'm on a roll, thanks to NaNoWriMo the Black Friday starts a new season, no shopping involved merely hunkering down, letting out the critic, honoring my editor and writing on.

What writerly adventures are you starting continuing or embarking on this season?

This work by Judith van Praag is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License