As I stated before, this year I participated in NaNoWriMo.  Now I’m here to say that I’ve won, I won and I’m thrilled with myself.

NaNoWriMo was a great experience and I am so glad I did it.  For years people have tried to talk me into it and this year I was so happy to tell them I was doing it.  I dared, and was dared back by @anechoic_chambe and again I am so glad for that little push, it helped keep me in the game.  Also, I am happy to report that both of us won, so I am really glad I pushed her too.  I met some wonderful people through the process by communicating with other NaNos in my area.  Here in the Valley we had write ins and stuff on the forums and games and while the write ins weren’t as productive as sitting down at home without distraction and writing, I did find that it kept me writing.  Talking about our novels at the write ins gave me ideas for writing.  I also met someone who lives relatively close to me and is a twitter addict like me and who happened to my my NaNo Nemisis.  On twitter she is known as @AuroraLee and basically she and I were neck and neck most of the month, every time she passed me I worked harder to pass her, and she then in turn worked to pass me.  My novel was about 53K words, her’s will be 150K so eventually she passed me.  I think had I more words she might have gotten more words then she did, as it was she made her personal goal of 75K and ended Nano with over 80K words, so she rocked any how.  The healthy competition was great.  There was some more competition with writing an apple as a weapon into our stories that everyone in our area was challenged to do and the write all night event we had some crazy word wars, and that was great.  My novel was finished by then so I wrote a 6K plus short story set in the ShadowRun world.

I had so much fun it looks like I will be joining the writing group that sprang out of last year’s Nano so I will continue to see all of those great people.  Also, more reasons for me to bake (I made filled cupcakes for two of the events and they were awesome. Sorry, no pics)

I also want to find or create something similar to the writing group but an art group, art club really.  A set time and place to meet people to paint or draw, I am really excited about that.  It will take a lot of work and planning and most likely won’t happen until the new year, but that’s just fine.

Also, I want to do my 40 days of Daily Creativity again this year.  Meaning, I will take on my task of creating something (painting or drawing) every day of lent.  I would love to start something like NaNoWriMo but for art, though if I picked March (which it turns out is National Youth Month) it is right before April which is ScriptFrenzy and people might not want to do it right before then… if I picked April then the same issue… though honestly I am really drawn (no pun intended) to March.  It’s a good time I think… hmmm so many ideas, so much I want to do.

Also, there is a secret project that people have been pushing and prodding me to do for the last two years or so, that I think I have firmly decided to do… more info on that later.  Oh and this secret project might let you read that ShadowRun Story :P

Thank you everyone in my area, thank you everyone on twitter and facebook for the support and encouragement.

Most importantly though, thank you to my husband who has made some great sacrifices (mostly time with me) through out this whole month and has been very supportive.  He is great and I really love how wonderful he was all month with me slacking on stuff so I can get my word count in or for being a bit of a shut in so I can write and losing me Monday nights for write ins and the other events.  Love you.

My Stats for the month. Total words, Novel and Short story were over 60K

Haven’t seen much from me have you?  Nope, why?  I’ve been busy and I decided to do NaNoWriMo this year, my first year ever.  What’s  NaNoWriMo you say?  NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month.  Every November wannabe writers use the month to prove to themselves that they can indeed write a novel.  The goal is to write 50k words in the thirty days.  Now it most likely won’t be your best piece of work and you may need more then 50k to tell the story but it’s a good start.  December (or whenever you finish) is when you can edit the novel and start on your second draft (Just because you wrote 50k doesn’t mean they are good or that anyone wants to read them)  So far I have found the energy around NaNo very helpful and I’m doing something I have always wanted to do.  I’m not a writer, I just do this as a hobby but now I’m proving to myself that if I wanted to write more, I could.  I’m already pretty far ahead which is funny because this may be one of the busiest Novembers ever.

Some people doing this I see are also posting to their blog everyday, I can’t imagine that.  My ML told me she is also participating in BlogMo, national blog writing month, ack, no thanks.

I have also made myself a  NaNoWriMo cheerleader, I want to give a lot of support to everyone working on their novels.  I think it’s a great thing to know you are right there with other people in the struggle and I know when I am cheered on it helps, plus I like being cheery.

See you next month.