I didn't win.

I didn’t win NaNoWriMo. I really wanted to. It crossed my mind to copy and paste words like “meow” and “woof” 14,000 times at the bottom of my document just to get my word count to winner-status, but that felt too much like cheating, and there was no point if I couldn’t enjoy the victory.

I spent most of the third week of NaNo with my family, not writing. This may have been my downfall. I entered the fourth week with only 30,000 words and girded myself for a series of writing binges. But knowing how many words I had to write was kind of a creativity buzzkill. That made it feel more like a paper to write than a novel, and if I was the kind of high-functioning individual who thrived on that kind of stress, I would have gone to grad school. Or taken up an instrument and become a travelling musician. Or something.

But I’m not that kind of individual. I think it was when my boss asked if I wanted to pick up some extra shifts that I came to terms with losing NaNo. I wasn’t about to stress myself out trying to get to the deadline and start my work week totally exhausted, immune system lowered, and ready to get the flu and be really miserable for my extended work week.

But did I lose NaNo? I may not have 50,000 words, but I have a story and characters and something to show my writing group. When December 1 came around, my “novel” clocked in at 36,148 words, and that’s a lot of progress for someone who’s been struggling to get her writing mojo back. My new goal is to flesh it out into a respectable, chronologically logical draft by the end of February. If my first blogpost in March begins with, “So I abandoned my novel…” I’ll make sure to link back to this post.

36,148 words ain’t too shabby, though.