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Sat
2
Dec '06

Finishing NaNoWriMo.

Well, I arrived in Portland laaaaate on Thursday night, half an hour before the end of NaNoWriMo. Did I win? Sort of.

I went through the batteries of my computer and PDA and still had a hour and a half left of the flight. I only owed 431 words. I’d been writing an average of 1400 per hour, so I knew darn well I could finish those 500 words. I pulled out a pen and a piece of paper to keep writing, when my seatmate decided to start chatting. Eh. I decided that since I would be home by 10:30 that I could safely get those last 431 words in.

What was I thinking?

I got home an hour later than I thought, thanks to some fairly routine and dull transit glitches. At this point, with half an hour to go, the 431 should still have been possible, but I worried that I’d run into problems uploading so–I cheated. I pasted in 500 words from another story. Uploaded it. Validated it. And THEN finished the remaining words. So, I did finish on time, but once I validated as a winner I couldn’t update my wordcount, so the one showing there is not the right word count. At midnight, I finished with 50,274 words.

I think the novel wants to be between 70,000 and 80,000 words long. I’d like to have that finished before Rob comes home, which should be possible, but I won’t go nuts over it, since I also want to have the house stuff finished by the time he’s home too.

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4 Comments

  1. momk momk on 02.12.2006 at 22:39 (Reply)

    Good luck Mary…on all of your ambitions. Peace!

  2. Evan Nichols Evan Nichols on 03.12.2006 at 05:52 (Reply)

    Hey, you got your wordcount, so Congratulations! You’re a Winner! FWIW, I recommend not taking as long to finish the story as I have with my 2005 Nano (399 days, and counting). I can’t see you doing that, though…

  3. Michele Michele on 03.12.2006 at 06:35 (Reply)

    Congrats on completing nano, and good luck finishing the novel! I only got half-way through nano, which is just under half-way through my novel (I think).

  4. Mary Robinette Kowal Mary Robinette Kowal on 03.12.2006 at 07:12 (Reply)

    Thank you! I’m got in 1600 words last night, of course, I also deleted a chunk, so my overall wordcount looks about the same. I need to find a new meter for ye olde sidebar…

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