NaNo Wrap-Up - 51,962 Words!

Yes, I finished. Unbelievable. I hit fifty thousands words tonight, a little while ago in fact, and because I was still working on a chapter, I took it right to the end (of the chapter). As of now, I have 51,962 words. But there is still so much left that I haven't finished writing about. I feel like I've just got my characters (plural: there are quite a few others now besides my MC) fully formed and in place for all of the real action to start. Why stop now?

I took B.B. for a long walk the other day. (Bear with me. This is going somewhere.) It was Friday, and I felt the need to work off all of the food I'd eaten on Thanksgiving Day. Plus, B.B. had been stuck inside all day long on Thursday and had pretty much slept the entire day. She can do that for one day, but the next day she needs some exercise or she gets a little crazy. So I took her out on a long walk, combining two long trails that we normally take separately, and ended up walking her for about 10 miles (which at my pace took us about two and a half hours). Yeah, crazy, I know. But I'd had enough turkey and stuffing and potatoes and pie (and whatnot) to last me a while, and I needed to burn some of that off. (The pedometer in my iPod told me, after we'd finished, that I'd burnt 2,000 calories on that walk. Nice.) Anyway, that gave me plenty of time to think and toss around different ideas for my story. And let me tell you, in two and a half hours, you can come up with quite a few ideas. I find that the fresh air and the exercise really gets my creative juices flowing. Probably has something to do with more oxygen getting to my brain than usual, but whatever. It works. I'm excited about some of the things I thought up, and I hope I can finish it. K suggested I spend the next 11 months working that out before I start on a new one in November 2010. Sounds like a plan.

But I think I might take a little break first. Whoever put NaNoWriMo in the middle of a month with a major American holiday in it was crazy to begin with. (Or, possibly, not American). Trying to write while getting ready for Christmas will be even more difficult. On top of that, I've got two books on my desk that I'm dying to read: Stephen King's latest, which will probably go first because he's usually a fast read for me, and Last Night in Twisted River, John Irving's new one.

So I'll do that, take just a little time off, but hopefully not so much that I completely lose the momentum I've build up over the past 29 days, and then get back to it. Wish me luck.

Many thanks to my friend M.C. Etcher for his daily blog updating his own NaNo progress, which has helped me along through the month. There was something comforting knowing that a buddy is going through the same pain exercise as I was.