Even though I didn’t hit 50k, I did restart my writing, which is a good thing. I’m hoping that I continue to work on this, but the holidays are a pain in the … well, you know. From NaNoWriMo:
Greetings, and welcome to the second-to-last email we’ll be sending out from headquarters this year. First off, I want to congratulate all our NaNoWriMo winners! We had 15,333 folks cross the finish line this year, which was a new record for us. Way to go, champions of 2007!
And now a word to those of you who didn’t win. If you missed the 50K goal, you might be feeling a little disappointed. Or embarrassed. Maybe you’re just reading this to help dig that guilt-knife a little deeper into your spleen. Yet another project where you started out strong and came up short, right?
Wrong.
If you signed up for the challenge and wrote 5,000 words, you did great. Successfully pulling off anything creative given our ridiculously high standards and congenitally overscheduled lives is a miracle, and sometimes that battle just can’t be won in a single month. Even 1000 words is an achievement, and more fiction than mos t people write in their entire lifetimes.
So keep writing. Next year, we’ll be doing it all over again. The great thing about noveling is that you learn something invaluable every time you do it. (Maybe the thing you learned this year is that you need to hire a sherpa to wash your dishes and attend all work meetings for you in November.)
I learned that I really missed writing the pep talks that go out to all NaNo participants. So next year, I’ll be wielding the pep-whip again, along with the pros we recruit. This year’s pep talks, though, are going to be tough to beat. Extra-special thanks to Neil Gaiman, Garth Nix, Julianna Baggott, Sue Grafton, Naomi Novik, Tom Robbins, Deanna Raybourn, and Sara Gruen for reaching out and inspiring us.
The pep talks are fantastic, now I need to get to work, regretfully not to writing…
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