National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short, takes place in November. Thousands of writers all over the world attempt to write 50,000 words during the month. It averages to about 1667 words a day, and most of them don’t make it.

Today I finished the novel. Full length novels are generally 70,000 to 120,000 words, so making the word count doesn’t mean the novel is completed. Lucky for me, I decided a YA novel would be good for the challenge and guessed it would be finished near that 50k mark.

My rough draft is 51,147! I have 20 chapters, maybe 21 if I split it a little differently. Editing starts in December, or really whenever I want to now that I’ve finished. I’m finding new ways to write and outline this year that have really helped my efforts.

My average per day I wrote (and I didn’t get to write a few days in there) was 2557. All right, I admit I’m a bit of a nerd and I keep track of those things! My personal best today was today: I wrote 7678 words.

I’ve listened to a lot of people who have strong opinions about this event. Some of the nay-sayers think they need to write quality rather than quantity. I think I can understand that, but I know I’m the type of writer who needs to get the story out of my head before revising it. Sometimes, it takes a completely different turn than I’d planned at the beginning and I like seeing how it all comes to life. When it’s down on paper I find it easier to polish the story and really hone in on what I want to say and fix mistakes. As long as everyone understands it will get a rewrite later, maybe two, or however many it takes to get that gem to shine.

So I’ve been cheering on my friends. This year we prepped together. We challenged ourselves and we planned celebrations. I made it, and I hope every one of them does, too. Then we’ll edit. Some of us will even try to publish them. Wish us luck!