Well, NaNoWriMo is almost over. As I’ve mentioned previously in my other NaNoWriMo posts, I have done this project several times before and was able to successfully complete it each time – even when I was a full-time student with a part-time job. This year, it’s been a whole different ballgame, for a lot of reasons.

I’ve learned a lot. (And not just the importance of not getting 11,000 words behind.) Not only that, but I have loved every minute of it, early mornings and late nights and all.

Here’s a snapshot of what my month looked like:

• Waking up at 5:00 a.m. the day after the Daylight Savings shift and considering it a gift: one extra hour to write. Score!
• Using my lunch break to write instead of actually, you know, eating lunch, as often as I could.
• Barricading myself in my house for the entirety of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend so that I could write.
• Several emails to my mom to share passages I was particularly proud of, with follow up texts to ask, like an over-active six-year-old “Did you like it? Did you read it yet? What did you think? Do you want me to send you more? I can send you more if you want. Do you like that one part?” (Okay, so that’s not actually what I did, but it’s what I felt like I was doing.)
• Desperately trying to catch up after getting 11,000 words behind. (Yeah, I won’t be letting that one go for a while.)
• Random Google searches for my story returning the most delightful results. The best was discovering, upon Googling “music from the 1750s,” that there is an album entitled Greatest Hits of 1750. Now if that just doesn’t tickle you and make your day, I don’t know what will.
• Reaching the end of my story…while still 20,000 words short of the monthly goal and having to get a little creative in what to add after that.

For updates on how close I am to reaching 50,000, you can follow me on Twitter. There will be no post this Wednesday (because that’s November 30 and I’ll either be writing madly trying to reach 50,000 or trying to recover from reaching it a day early), but next Wednesday, I’m planning on a post about what I have learned (for real) from this mad month-long adventure. Until then…

Happy writing? (Can that be a thing now?)