Day 29 & 30: Finished at 50,379

Well, Day 29 just slipped through my fingers somehow. But I did finish with 23 and a half hours to spare on Day 30. ;o) My final count? According to the NaNoWriMo Word Count Verifier: 50,379

And once again, I managed to finish the story as well as the make the word count by the deadline. Double hoorays!

If you're interested, here are my final stats from the fancy, shamancy Excel spreadsheet that I have been using to track my progress all month:

Word Count Reached 50379
Total Hours Spent Writing 27.75
Avg Words Per Hour 1815
Avg Words Per Day 1679
Avg Hours Writing Per Day 0.93
Words Remaining To Goal 0
Days Remaining In November 0
Avg Time Per Writing Session 0.35 hours

Yay me! Here's to my second NaNo win, the completion of my third novel ever, all my fellow Wrimos, and all the friends who showed up to support me. *tips a glass of sparkling cider and salutes all her supporters* Thank you!

Day 28: The last chapters + encouragement

I could probably finish tonight, but I'm not going to. It's 1:15 a.m. and my husband just announced he's going to bed. That's sure a good idea!

All that's left tomorrow is the last chapter and 1,200-odd words. I'm confident that I can get that written tomorrow easily. One more chapter, and I'm done!

Words to date: 48,722
Words to go: 1,278

In other news, I prepared and edited an excerpt of my novel to take to the Thank Goodness It's Over Party this weekend. It took me about an hour and a half to edit a mere eleven pages. I'm astonished. Well, actually I'm not. When you're trying to write so fast and so much, junk is bound to get spilled on the page. Let's just say that the eleven pages got whittled down to nine by time I got done with it. My inner editor was so happy. LOL :oD

Anyway, I took the slashed version to my critique group tonight to get some impressions and final edits. The response was surprisingly good. They had very few edits and gave compliments all around. My good friend who has published many books already encouraged me that Tag would make a great novella. Hm... So maybe all this will actually be worth something in the end.

It was good to hear that though because I'd been thinking lately how much I didn't want anyone to ever lay eyes on this monstrosity. But I guess that's what NaNoWriMo tends to create. It gives us a big old, ugly chunk of clay on the wheel and allows us to shape and form it into something beautiful. Without that first draft, there would be no clay at all.

You can read my edited excerpt on my profile page. Just click "turn" to get to page two, then click on the right-hand page to load the text. Enjoy!

Day 27: Still going!

It's a good thing that I got those writing sessions in during the wee hours on Day 26 because by time I got home, unpacked, organized life, and ate dinner, all I wanted to do was go to sleep...and I did.

Today, I managed to get in four 10-minute writing sessions which amounted to 1,885 words. Doing okay. Slow and steady. I should be done in the next day or two--definitely before Nov. 30!

Words to date: 46,420
Words to go: 3,580