Finished — Sorta

Just finished inputting my word count for NaNoWriMo 2013, that mad rush to slap 50,000 words or more onto paper every November, but a word count does not a finished novel make.

I was a NaNo rebel this year, and didn’t just write on one novel, nor did I create an entirely new story, but added material to two novels, wrote a presentation and an essay, and dumped all those words into my word count.

What? I violated the spirit of NaNoWriMo?

Perhaps.

However, for a writer who has spent little time actually writing, November has afforded me an opportunity for literary hedonism. Most of my “word time” in the past two years has been spent editing other writers’ manuscripts for publication. Meantime, my own novels have gathered virtual cobwebs in the corner of my computer’s desktop.

The only way to “win” (complete) NaNoWriMo is to compose 50k words and dump them into the manuscript validator on the website. So, almost every word I wrote this month–excluding e-mail–was eventually copied-and-pasted into a hodgepodge document. My real goal, however, wasn’t the word count but progress on an urban fantasy too long incomplete.

Made a promise to a friend back in the summer: that I would have a completed draft of this novel ready by the middle of July.

Sure, I’ve made progress this month, and sure, there are eight months remaining before the deadline, but it’d be great to finish the rough draft by, say, February, then polish it up nice over a couple more drafts before handing it over to the aforementioned friend, who has been waiting for a few years to read the rest of the story.

Which proves once again that, despite my dislike of deadlines, they are necessary motivators.