"Nights of Ice" - a novel, written in 30 days
Now that I've had a couple of days to recoup (and not look at a computer screen, type on a keyboard, think, etc.) I have to say I'm pretty happy about how the whole Nanowrimo thing turned out for me. The last day was a bit of a crazy challenge to say the least. But I somehow knew it could be done.
I was at just over 40,000 words Friday. After work I joined about 20 other novellists-on-a-deadline at a final write-in event by the Edmonton Nanowrimo-ers. The event was held here at the Stanley A. Milner Library branch of Edmonton Public Library (the branch where I work). We had word wars, we had pizza, and I knocked off a big chunk of my remaining novel.
By the time 9 p.m. rolled around, and we had to leave, I still had 2,500 words to go. I drove home to Spruce Grove, had the Oilers game on TV, and wrote away. By this time, my wrists and forearms were getting really sore, and I was running out of time, but I just kept writing.
At 11:45 p.m., I crossed the magic 50,000 mark.
I filed the story with the Nanowrimo site, clicked "update", and waited. It seemed to take forever. In reality, it took about five seconds.
Then my word count bar turned purple, with "Winner!" across the top. I was so exhausted and so excited, I almost burst into tears.
I backed up my story file, took 20 minutes to calm down, and went to bed. I had just written a 50,000+ word novel in a month. I had just written 9,446 words in one day and finished with less than 15 minutes left to go. I now have a novel to call my own.
Yesterday I imported the story file into a Word doc (I wrote the thing using a free word processing program called Dark Room, which is a semi-successful Windows version of the better WriteRoom for Mac. The idea of using programs like these is they block out everything except your writing, so there's no distractions. But this means there's also no spell check, no formatting, etc). and I printed the sucker off. My first draft of "Nights of Ice - a Novel" weighs in at 230 pages (using 10 pt. Courier New font, double spaced and single sided). The final word count of Draft 1 is 50,206.
I plan to go back and read this living monster over the Christmas holidays, and I have a couple of friends who want to read it too. After that, if I feel it's worth the work, I'll dive in and do a Draft 2 rewrite in the new year.
If I do, I'll post my progress updates right here. Now that the "post an excerpt" function of my profile on the Nanowrimo site seems to be disabled now that Nanowrimo is over, I may post an excerpt on this blog soon, too.
Thanks to everyone who came to read about my progress here, and for everyone who encouraged me along the way! It was a short trip, but one I'll never forget.
