NaNoWriMo Day 20: THE WIN!

With less than a thousand word to go to “win” the NaNoWriMo event, I figured I’d throw in an afternoon session to push myself past the milestone.  I wrote one new scene that added 1,109 words–which gives me a 20-day total of 50,159 words, and which officially pushes me over the 50,000 word-mark.  For the second year in a row, I am a NaNoWriMo winner.  Here is a picture of the winner in his brand new NaNoWriMo winner’s t-shirt:

And here’s a closeup of the shirt:

And here is how my win looked in Scrivener:

It’s pretty exciting to win the challenge in a mere 20 days.  But this is only the first step in my larger goal–which is to write a novel that is good enough to SELL. And that means the next milestone will take over as my focus: to finish the novel.  I completed NaNoWriMo last year on November 25 and I ended up with 60,000 words by November 30.  But I gave up after that, feeling that it was a good exercise, but what I had written wouldn’t work for a novel.  This year, I’ve tried to plan things better and at the 50,000-word mark, I’m feeling very good about the story that I’m telling.

My plan going forward is to maintain the same pace that I’ve been working since I started: aiming for 2,000 words each and every day until I hit 90,000 words (or finish the novel). At my current pace I should finish up the first draft around December 10.  I will continue to make my daily posts of my progress so that those who are interested can continue to follow along on this process.

All told, I wrote 3,617 words today, which is an extraordinary day for me.  I’m planning to be back up early tomorrow to get in my 2,000 words.  Very early for a Sunday since we’re hitting the road at 8am.  But I’m taking the rest of the evening off.

Here are the revised stats for today: