Win!

So I finished the 2009 NaNoWriMo challenge last night at around 2am, while Mrs. Exile was pulling an almost all-nighter on an assignment for one of her library school classes. That's 50,000 words in 20 days! Though I still have to bring the novel to a satisfactory conclusion, I'm hoping to have done so by the end of the month.

It's funny how different this year's NaNoWriMo was from the last one I participated in, in 2006. While I managed to "win" that year as well, getting those 1776 words in every day proved to be a constant challenge and/or source of worry, whereas this time around I was averaging almost 3000 words every day that I wrote. So what changed?

The tools, for starters. In 2006 I was still writing on my PDA, which is a great way to focus, but you can only peck so fast. This year however I used a laptop from start to finish, as distraction really isn't the issue that it used to be for me. When I'm writing, I'm writing- not surfing the web, Tweeting, or updating Facebook.

I think I'm just also in a different place with my writing efforts than I was three years ago as well. Back in 2006 I'd just finished the first draft of Confessions of a Gourmand and was still trying to figure out whether I had any creative juice left in me. This time around I know that I've only just begun.

When I do finish "Eight" (the tentative title of this year's NaNoWriMo project), it will be the fourth work set in the same fantasy world, after Confessions, The Librarian's Tale, and Varonian Nights. There was a time when I thought that I needed to make a break from a genre writing, as if it were something to be purged out of my system so that I could move on to more serious literary efforts, but the more I fully realize this world the more I realize I want to spend more time in it, not less.

I do still have a non-genre project that I've been working on since before the 2006 NaNo, and I hope to return to it sometime early next year, but I fully expect to add more installments to the world of Van d'Allamitri, the Great Library of Iskdandalon, and of course the City of Varo as well. And as revise and edit each of these tales, I will be posting them online just as I have been with Confessions of a Gourmand.

Good luck to everyone on finishing up this year's NaNoWriMo- remember to just keep writing!

(Yes, I know the above is a split infinitive. Deal with it...)