NaNoWriMo Officially Over In My Neck of the Woods!

That's right literature fans, it is official the results are in...National Novel Writing Month has officially ended in my time zone and I am exhausted, but proud to say that I, on my very first attempt have managed to exceed the 50000 word expectation (slightly), and just timely enough to qualify as a NaNoWriMo 2005 Winner!!!!!

I have to say that this has been a great experience for a literary perfectionist like me. I have written in some shape or fashion for as long as I can remember, but have never actually been able to "complete" a project because I have chronic "edit-itis". Edit-itis is a condition typically contracted by those who would write which causes them to be incapable of getting to the end of a piece of work because they are constantly re-reading and subsequently editing the body of work they have actually produced. A vicious cycle emerges, resulting in a complete and total failure to produce even one finished product.

When I began my NaNo novel two weeks after the start pistol had been fired, I was still suffering from this terrible condition. As the days passed and my word count did not grow quickly enough to meet the average per day needed to sucessfully complete my task, I realized that something had to give or I would FAIL! Obsessed with the desire to say I had done it, I forced myself to focus only on being as wordy as I could possibly be while at the same time trying to tell the story I had originally set out to tell. Slowly my daily counts started to climb until I completed a marathon writing session over the last two days which resulted in the addition of almost 20000 words, putting me over the top and into the Winner's Circle.

There are lessons in all things...what were my take-aways from this exercise?

• Stay the course...it will pay off--->I have actually written my first book! Right now it's short and it needs work no doubt, but it EXISTS!
• Perfection can be created only if there is imperfection first;in other words, to perfect something, you gotta have something to perfect--->I have a novel, bring on the revisions!
• NaNoWriMo works and creates writers if you work at it, writers Rock, and if the transitive property applies (if a=b and b=c, then a=c)--->I worked my ass off, I became a writer, and therefore, I ROCK!