Surprise?
Back in October, when I was knee deep in Whumptober and just generally feeling sorry for myself, I made the decision to go ahead and give Nanowrimo yet another attempt. By my math, this would be my 15th attempt. I’ve never won. And I honestly figured this year would be more of the same.
If you’re not sure what Nanowrimo is, the easiest answer is that it’s an event to encourage writers to write 50,000 words in the month of November. You can write whatever you want, you can use whatever medium you need or want to, but that’s the general thing. 50k in 30 days, 1667 words a day.
With my migraines getting worse, as well as moving from training to actively working at work, I figured I was doomed. But I thought of something. Why not use a tool that I used when I texted to get through each day?
I used speech to text. This method made it possible for me to write while doing other tasks, or when I was laid up in bed, and I didn’t have to look at the screen while I did it. To make it “fair”, at the end of the night, I gave that day’s text file (I made a new one per day) a quick edit if at all possible before entering my word court onto the Nanowrimo website for official tally.
When I wasn’t using speech to text, I was writing on my kindle with keyboard attachment (my “I survived training” present). This was especially helpful when I attended a local write in on by birthday in the middle of the month.
Well, my word count rose steadily each day, with weekends being higher and weekdays (especially Monday’s) being lower. I honestly wasn’t really looking too hard until around 30k when I realized that I was racking up the word count. That was actually the day after my birthday when I saw that. That was when I realized that not only was I on the road to doing this… I was ahead.
So much ahead that when November 23 was coming to a close, I discovered I crossed the 50k mark. That was Thanksgiving Eve.
I cried. A lot.
Okay, seriously, I have never legitimately won. Never. And this year I did. I never expected it, but it happened.
So what exactly did I write? Well… I totally wrote fanfic that will never see the light of day. Basically I wrote a bunch of one-shot fanfics, for the most part simply spite fics to get my annoyance and anger out about different aspects of 9-1-1. Does it count? YEP.
I’m still happy about this. It’s done and finished and I ended up finishing with over 65k words in the can. I’ve been taking the last few days to take a break from writing before I finish my last Whumptober fic and everything else I’ve wanted to work on.
Even with everything else going on right now, this was a good accomplishment to hit.
Until next time!
