Win!

I verified my novel last night--more than 24 hours ahead of the midnight, November 30 deadline--at 50,608 words.

I almost don't want to talk about this experience because I don't want to jinx it.

Think of the one productive thing that you've always wished you could do but have always been too busy, lazy, or intimidated to do it. Now let's say that someone applies just the right amount of pressure, while removing all of the mental obstacles. There's no reason to say no.

Right now, the novel I wrote is not a masterpiece, by any means.  Two of the main tenets of NaNoWriMo are "No Plot, No Problem," and "Write First, Ask Questions Later" meaning, basically, that it's an exercise in getting lots of words down on paper, not in being your harshest critic. Over-thinking every word is one of the number one things that holds new authors back. You can't afford to get mired in a cesspool of self-criticism when you've got to write 1,667 words every day, which is the second great thing about the whole experience.

Having a visible daily goal, with a monster end-goal in sight (and a group of hundreds of thousands of other people trying for the same goal) makes an enormous difference. Even with all these incentives, it's incredibly difficult to set aside such a huge hunk of time that could be spent doing just about anything else, but it's really rewarding to look at your word count for the day and see that you've written not just one thousand, but three thousand words.

So... what to do with my novel? It needs so much work before it could ever be anything like something someone would want to read. (And I haven't even written the end yet.) But, cheesy as it may sound, I feel like now I'm better equipped to get it there.  And there are more ideas stewing in my head for something else. I'm so glad I did this. Period.