But over the course of Halloween weekend and my last few days of the season working Halloween Haunt at Kings Dominion, I came up with an idea.
That idea got me through the first chapter and when I typed “Chapter 2” I had no idea what word was coming next.
Still, on Sunday night I managed to crest that 50,000-word mountain and reach, as of this writing, 50,321 words.
I frequently joke about NaNoWriMo works being garbage in serious need of an edit or two.
I’m pleased that this year I have a story.
It’s not exactly what I would call garbage. At the same time I’m not sure I should leave it out on the counter overnight.
In the NaNoWriMo world, November is for writing. December is for editing and re-writing.
I now have six “completed” NaNoWriMo novels to edit. I have been over the past year working on one of those. I’m still working.
The point is that I’m still writing.
I was in my 50s before I went from saying “I want to be a writer” to “I am a writer.”
It’s made a difference. Not financially but in the way that I take my writing more seriously. I work at it. I write every day.
Summer before this last one I embarked upon a writing project in which I first promised myself that I would write 500 words a day. I became so proficient that I moved that up to 1,000.
I won’t tell you what event precipitated the project other than to tell you that the working title was “How I Wrote My
The Write Side
Ass out of Hell.”
It’s a work in progress. Draw your own conclusions.
I’ve fallen off the 1,000 words a day wagon, but I’m continuing to write. And I think the year of that project is what helped me make it through NaNoWriMo so quickly.
If nothing else it helped with the typing skills.
What happens next with the book? It goes on the shelf with the others. There are the priorities of the script and the other novel that I’m editing/re-writing.
When will they be published? I don’t know if they ever will.
Perhaps they’ll be published posthumously and make my heirs bazillionaires.
Or perhaps they’ll be used to light my funeral pyre.
Regardless, I will know that I have written a book…no, make that books.
Maybe even good ones.
Because, I’m a writer.
And, like Ms. Potter said, I don’t know where that’s going to take me.
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