No Nano this year for me

NaNoWriMo (the National Novel Writing Month) is a good way to jump-start a novel.  Write 50,000 words in the month of November and you win a certificate or something.  I completed my new novel last year, NaNo 2011, after weak starts in 2009 and 2010.  I considered doing NaNo 2012 with a new idea that is just starting to crystallize.  Then I decided with everything else going on this November in addition to my usual complaint about NaNo-Thanksgiving, I would bow out.

I've been doing my part to get out the vote this year, phone banking, registering voters, social media, and this week I went into hiding until Tuesday. I was just about burnt out. 

And then there is my annual college friends' trip.  We usually do it in the summertime, and we take turns hosting.  This year is being hosted by our friend who lives in New York City.  Fortunately, the last I heard, she didn't lose power during the storm.  But the five of us won't be piling into her place anyway.  She planned for us to go to her family homeplace in rural Pennsylvania.  The nearest airport is Pittsburgh.  These are my friends who survived hitch-hiking around Europe in the 60's.  We know about roughing it, just haven't done much of it in the last 40 years.  And we're watching the weather for the possibility of a Nor'easter.  With any luck we'll get out of there and back home well before Thanksgiving.

So NoNo NaNo this year.

I'm Done!

I reached my goal in NaNoWriMo. No, I didn't complete writing 50,000 words in the month of November, 2011 and I won't get a certificate for winning the challenge. I did what I set out to do, which was to complete the novel I started in NaNo2009 and NaNo2010. I reached the end of the story, and I did it before my Thanksgiving company arrived, with a few days to spare.

I will say that this time NaNoWriMo was a life-changing experience. I've never done that kind of heads-down pounding out words, most of which had something to further the plot of my story. Sometimes my characters went off in directions I had not planned for them, but they and I grew in the process. We grew so much that I changed my working title again. This one I'm not ready to reveal, but it has more grit than the first two titles I tried.

I have backed up this one, my first draft and don't intend to even look at it again until January. I have Thanksgiving and Holiday parties to get through before I'll be ready for the tearing apart and rewriting of my Nano-stuff. Wish me luck.