The End of NaNo 2007

I finished this year's NaNoWriMo at about 1:10 this morning, ending with 8115 words for the day (I hadn't gone to bed, so I still count it as the same day) and a total of 88,705 words completed in 29 days, a new record for me. I did 3,047 more words than I did last year (and hit 86,000 before midnight, so it counts! LOL)

I looked at last year's "I did it" post, and so much of what I said then was true this year, too.

But this year was harder. I didn't love the book and the characters as much--I don't think I ever will. That's okay. It's not a bad thing. But it did make every day more of a struggle, knowing the characters were flat and the world too similar to last year's world (not really, and yet definitely) and some plot devices way stale and overused. It wasn't the book I envisioned when I started, even moreso than usual.

Time was harder to get, too. I did four critiques of various sizes, and I volunteered at my kids' schools A LOT. We had the big dining room project over the holiday (which was early, and that messes things up). Last year I wasn't doing editing and proofreading professionally, either. This year I did 16 paid projects (again, of various sizes, most pretty small, but frontloaded so I fell behind on my book pretty quickly). It meant many more late nights to get the words in.

I felt more isolated in it this year, too. I don't know why. The friends who did it last year also did it this year, but we didn't communicate directly as much, probably because of the new way the buddies were laid out. Maybe part of it, too, was this was my second time. The excitement wasn't the same.

So now I get to clean my house and do some critiquing I'd been putting off, catch up on my filing and declutter my office. I am 4,253 words shy of 300,000 for the year, so I plan to work on a short story in December, but that's it. I'll set a much smaller writing goal for 2008, mainly because my to-do list currently looks like this:

1. Revise Behind the Scenes
2. Revise Hummingbird
3. Revise More Than You Know

That's half a year's work right there, plus (fingers crossed) I hope to have a book in production, which will mean revisions on that, plus marketing and promotional work and AAs. And any plan might be derailed based on which book sells and whether or not there's a second book to write in follow-up.

Anyway. Let me conclude by congratulating every writer who won 2007 NaNo; every writer who tried to win; and every writer who wrote, whether part of NaNo or not. You all rock.