Winning

Today marked the first day of officially validating your NaNoWriMo word count, so I can now post this as an officially verified winner! They even added an extra ten words to my word count once I'd validated, cheers all round. So now I've printed out my winner's certificate and added a winner's t-shirt to my Christmas list, what does the future hold? Have I caught the writing bug? Will I be signing up next year?

I can safely say that I enjoyed the experience, which was probably down to the fact I went in with such low expectations and came out with a 50k novel. I've dabbled in writing before now, but never to this extent and it certainly made me consider doing more writing in the future. It also reassured me about going on to study English someday in the future which has become an ambition of mine recently. Plus, I've already started planning out the sequel to this story, as well as beginning the editing process of my NaNo novel. Oh and I've started an entirely new story, too! So it's been a positive experience overall.

Of course I have the advantage of not having an awful lot going on in my life at the moment, so who knows whether I'll have the time/energy/opportunity to be as successful next year, but I'll certainly be giving it a go!

Writing is a mind field of a profession where if I'm to take it seriously, then I have to prepare myself for disappointment. But for now I'm just going to enjoy writing as a hobby and enjoy crafting something I can be proud of at the end of the process. Already I'm proud of the characters I have created, the story that ended up just how I wanted and the amount of words on the page. And I've done all this whilst battling M.E symptoms which makes the achievement all the more staggering for me.

If you haven't validated your word count yet then do it now! :) just go to the "edit your novel" option and click the link.

I can't think of a thing worth sharing right now so I might edit one in later, shh ;)

Until next time,

Sarah x

NaNoWriMo - I'm done!

So I promised to blog about my progress during NaNoWriMo and I didn't. Well, that paid off because today I passed the 50k word count at finished my novel! I'm sure I'll document my experience more fully in blog posts to come but I thought I'd note down some of the things I have learnt on the way.

1. I can write 50k words in 15 days, who knew?!
2. Planning my chapters was a complete waste of time. I went off chapter plan on day one and didn't even look at it the rest of the time.
3. Characters are the most important thing. If I hadn't spent the time and effort thinking about my characters that I did, I would have gotten nowhere.
4. Music is the best inspiration. I downloaded Spofity mid-NaNo and found some songs that helped spur me on.
5. Writing that much is going to send your brain into overload. At one point I spelt gesture with a 'j'. I'm still embarassed.
6. Writing is fun! So much fun. I can't wait to get stuck into more stories. I hope I never lose the love I've found for writing during this month.

I'm sure there are loads more things to say about this month, but I'm too frazzled to remember them. If you haven't given NaNoWriMo a look before and are wondering what it's all about, then I'd recommend it to anyone. It's a great experience. So my ultimate "thing worth sharing" is this wonderful website.

Until next time,

Sarah x