With 3.5 Hours To Spare, A Small Miracle

I've never been a fan of people who stop right at 50,000 words. Especially if they're on the Word War team. But that was, hypocritically, me this year.

I did write until the end of the chapter where I reached 50,000 at 8:33 p.m. This was 50,125.

The final writing session was from 4:30 p.m. to 8:45 p.m. so I figured that I deserved a break. And I still hadn't eaten dinner yet. So I stopped.

I kept meaning to pick the novel back up because now I'm really in the meaty part where the plot is just flowing out of my fingers (though I've reached a spot where the final confrontation should happen and I don't know how it should).

And when I sat back down, finally, at 11:15 (after watching the end of the Bears game and writing a review on Yelp of the Mexican place I went to with my parent yesterday), I started typing away. But then I just ran out of time.

Final word count: 50,576.

My lowest word count ever. My latest finish time ever. Well, neither are true if you count 2003 when I gave up. But of the now five years I have won, that's exactly the case.

But with what I went through this Novemeber, some people are congratulating me for finishing at all. Even my old nemesis (and probably best NaNo friend from outside of Chicago) Toronto's ML Deb (greensong).

I'm amazed she finished. And she accomplished something even more unbelievable than me. I wrote a little over 10,000 words the last two days. She wrote 23,500.

All of my NaNo buddies ended up finishing strong this year (except for the few who didn't procrastinate). Kim (rosemilk) wrote 20,000 words today alone.

Now that would have just about killed me.

So I go into 2009 with a fresh lease on my NaNo streak. And next year I'll be more involved again as I'll have a working laptop. Barring any unforseen things. Though I may be in a different region than Chicago. I might be in Washington D.C. or Northern Virginia.

I may do NaNoFiMo to polish off the last few chapters. But I think I've said that every year since that debuted (it's that month's 5th anniversary this year). I'll see how I feel after taking the 1st and 2nd off.

It would be nice just to say, "the end" for once.

This time, however, I do promise one thing. December entries in Retentivewrimo. Or at least one. That's something I've been horrible about.