I made it again this year! My seventh NaNoWriMo, my third win (simply writing 50,000 words for those that are unfamiliar with how one wins National Novel Writing Month).
I really didn't think I'd make it this year. With moving and trying to finish a project right at the end of October, I didn't really get to plan ahead on my story. To tell the truth, I never plan as much as I would like to, but this year I hadn't even decided for certain on which story. Also, usually I get extra word count while I'm at women's retreat, but since it started on the first, I hadn't gotten into any groove yet to use my extra free time wisely.
So, that is how it ended up that I wrote on 13 different stories- mostly old stories and a few new stories that popped into my mind, whatever got the words written until I decided what I wanted to work on the most... which I never really decided. Here's a list of the stories I worked on, a description, and their word counts. (Titles in quotations are just what I call them so I know which story I'm talking about, not real titles.)
(words that don't go to a particular story) 27
Evil Ilva (2007's Nano) fairy tale- 3048
Quiet the Voices (2008's Nano) scifi- 864
"Roses" (2009's Nano) fantasy adventure- 269
Miss Nary (2010's Nano) Christian romance- 359
"Prism" (2011's Nano) fantasy- 566
Eventually trilogy (2012's Nano) fantasy- 5347
"Gaelisha" (random old story barely written on) time travel- 100
When You Wish Upon A Rock Star (story someone told me to write a long time ago) romance- 444
"Mad" (random old story barely written on) spy? romance- 16352
The Enchanted Widow and the Insignificant Other (new story) fantasy/scifi 10447
"aliens" (new story) scifi childrens?- 10034
(a blog post I was trying to write) 284
"branch girl" (recent story) children's fantasy- 1346
"penguin ninjas" (recent story) children's- 552
"tree hair" (new story) children's- 81
I haven't gone through to see if there are any excepts worth posting this year, but if you want to read some of the previous years: Posts #44 and #46 for Eventually, #27 for Quiet the Voices and #23 for Evil Ilva, or visit http://nanowrimo.org/participants/esthella/novels for excerpts and descriptions of all of my previous Nano-novels except Evil Ilva (for some reason it only gives the option to list the novels back to 2008 and I started in 2007).
This year was more of a rebel win, and I can hardly believe I actually made it. I somehow wrote 7500 words on the last day. I am pretty sure I've never written that much at once before. For some people the words pour out, for me they are a fight. I never would have made if I was at home the last day, but I spent the afternoon at the library with others from my region. The word wars there and on facebook were all that kept those words coming out.
To be honest, I hardly feel like I won. There isn't the same excitement with a million different stories, it isn't as gratifying. I have hopes for those stories still, but I can't look at them the same as previous years and feel like I halfway completed a book. I don't know if it's my lack of excitement that means others aren't quite as excited for me, or that I just didn't have as many friends who seemed to notice or care that made me less excited also.
Still, each year it seems a little easier to write that many words.
