Nanowrimo or, How I spent my Thanksgiving break.

Well, I almost wore out babynames.com and Word's sorry excuse for a thesaurus, but you, lovely followers and random people who stumble across this post, are reading the blog of a nanowrimo champion. That's right, in just a single month I wrote a novel. Is it good? I don't know yet. Does it need a crap ton of editing? You better believe it. But ladies and gentlemen of the internet...I finished something.

And not just a little measly something. I finished a novel. I wrote 50,010 words of a book that are for the most part coherent and cohesive. Some of you will get to read it soon. Some of you probably don't want to read it, but regardless, I finished it. I even have plans for a sequel (though I will probably take a little more time on it.) And for someone who has struggled their whole life to get out and do stuff (yes, writing alone in my room counts as doing stuff) this achievement may be my greatest to date.

Sure there was high school and college and moving out of my parent's basement, but I had to do those things. This I did for me. Because I love writing. Because getting lost in my own story the way I get lost in the stories of people I am in awe of gives me a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment I've rarely known. Now I get to carry on with finals and papers and the doldrums that lead up to being off for Christmas break and say, "Ha! 20 double space pages. I wrote a novel this month."

What makes this night even better? I actually like my novel. The characters are new and fresh and came out of a really fun experience I got to have right before shit hit the fan last winter. They're interesting and don't fit conventional molds and strive for things that are beyond themselves because it will help somebody else. Occasionally they're crass, and some of them are super creepy, but they're all wonderful, and they all drive the story and I love them. I'm sure I still have work to do development wise, and there's probably a few plot holes lurking, but I'm excited to go on this adventure with them once more to help clean up their world (at least literarily) and get them ready to meet the world if that should ever come to pass.