Drum Roll Please...

For anyone who's been following along, NaNoWriMo (that's "National
Novel Writer's Month") ended last Sunday. The goal was to write
50,000 words during the month of November. I decided to participate,
although I didn't officially sign up, with the high hopes of
finishing my WIP (that's "Work in Progress"). So, without further
ado, here are my results:

6,500 words.

Yep. I fell short (that's "way too low"). For those of you who aren't
math whizzes, that's more than 40,000 words short of my goal--a mere
thirteen percent. Now, thirteen percent is excellent, if you're
talking profit margins, but it's worse than fake dog doody in your
Christmas stocking if you're talking about rate of completion. Even
with all the articles and conjunctions (how many of you just sang the
"Conjunction Junction" song in your head?), my word count came up so short, I pulled my calendar to make sure I was actually in town and
conscious during the month of November.

I was. What really happened was that I came up with 6,500 really
great words, but no more. November was a tough month for writing--and I'm not pulling the old "holidays" excuse, either. I'm pulling the
old "most of my words were drivel so I deleted them," coupled with
the old "I didn't sit and write every day" excuse. It's the last one
that really did me in. Having ten thousand poorly chosen words is a
far cry better than zero excellent words, and when I sit in front of
my computer playing Sid Meier's Civilization instead of writing, it's
no wonder that my word count was so abysmal. Curse you, Sid Meier,
for creating such an addictive computer game when I've got a life to
live and a novel to complete!

So. Now that the contest is over, and the bitter taste of defeat
cloaks my taste buds like a jet fuel/antifreeze mix, it's time to
strap in, put the tray table up, and prepare for take off. December's
GOT to be better, in terms of word count. Maybe if I delete the
Civilization shortcut off my desktop, I'll be unable to find the game
on my hard drive. Or maybe I'll just dust of my self-discipline and
put it back into play. Whatever works.

-Sonja