It was a long slog. A lot of coffee was consumed. There were indeed nights I didn’t sleep, sat in bed with a notebook while t’other half tried to sleep – but I made it: I reached the fifty thousand word mark and so am officially a 2011 nanowrimo winner.
It just doesn’t feel like as great an achievement as getting the tattoo done last week, and it’s taken me a couple of days to work out why: the story isn’t complete, and it’s a pretty much unedited mess apart from the first six chapters (though they do make a good eighteen thousand words story arc). I think the sense of anticlimax comes from knowing I now have to keep going, aim for nearer one hundred thousand words.
As a first time novelist it’s a daunting target, and at the same time, with the raw amount of words under my belt now I know it’s achievable. I just have to get up and do it.
Right, time to put the kettle on, have some toast and start my day. I have a chapter to write on a crime scene and a victim apparently back from the dead.