Nearly at the Nanowrimo end....can I do it?

(a very quick post, because I should be nanowrimo-ing, not much time left)

 

November has been a very strange month.

For 18 days I was writing feverishly in an attempt to write a novel in 30 days as part of NaNoWriMo - national novel writing month.

Then my parents arrived for 10 days to come and see what Arizona was like.

It's been my Dad's first time in America. Mum has been before, but only for a conference in New Orleans so she hasn't really seen much of the USA either.

It's been really interesting to see what things they've found amazing about America, the things we've become used to - the incredible wideness of the roads; not being able to see the back wall of supermarkets because they're so huge; the fact that we have drive-through fast-food AND banks, pharmacies, even churches.

So anyway, 10 days ago I decided I wouldn't be able to finish Nanowrimo whilst they are here and so I just gave up. It couldn't be done, so I didn't do it.

But the fact that I had already written nearly 30,000 of my 50,000 words kept nagging away at me. I was over half way - I knew that if I hadn't have stopped I could've made it. And this bothered me.

So two nights ago, on yet another of my sleepless nights, I got up and started writing again. I'm not saying that I'm writing anything of quality, and definitely my novel is going in all directions and doesn't have a lot of coherence BUT I wrote nearly 3000 words in 2 hours and I thought to myself - "I might still fail at getting all of this done by midnight on Tuesday 30th November (actually 11.59.59)...and remembering that I have to upload everything I've written - but I would rather fail still trying than fail by sitting looking at a computer and doing absolutely nothing".

So I started writing wherever and whenever I could. On the computer when I could. As draft emails on my blackberry when in the car. And the word count still needed started coming down.

And then I spotted something very interesting on Twitter this weekend that also inspired me - I saw the hashtag '#50kweekend' that was begininning to appear next to the normal '#nanowrimo' ones I've been watching. There are apparently lots of people who are making things even harder for themselves by writing the whole thing, the whole 50,000 words but have only just started this weekend.

I'm not sure if they are all trying to do it in 2 days or whether they will be finishing it off (hopefully) today and tomorrow. But if they can write 50000 in just 2 or 4 days, surely I can write my remaining words in that time?

So when I restarted again I had 20,019 words still to write. Tonight, with less than 18 hours to go I have now 9,995 words to go....it's possible but I'm now so tired and zonked by the whole month I sometimes can't decide whether I've already written scenes before.

It's a crazy thing to attempt, but why not go out in a blaze of glory trying to grab onto the ledge at the other side of the ravine...and many other terrible over blown analogies.

Let's see shall we?

I'll see you on the other side, on Wednesnday 1st December and tell you whether I managed the crazy idea and whether I'll ever want to write another word again.

Plus I'll tell you about my next crazy idea and monthly challenge - 25 days for 25 makings.

See you there!

(Wow, that was 594 words....shame they weren't part of the novel. Doh!)

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