NaNoWriMo - the Final Days (& Stats & Post Card #3)

2012 Winner!

VICTORY DANCE TIME! 

That's right, people! I won NaNoWriMo for the fourth year in a row! And guess what my final wordcount is??

53,191 words!!!!!!!!

Yes, you read that correctly. I am almost two days of quotas ahead in this year's NaNoWriMo challenge. (Disclaimer: Some of these words were re-typed from my blog posts, journals, and a few old papers I wrote. I still wrote thousands of original words this month though and I'm proud of all that I have accomplished.)

My last postcard -- homemade
and absolutely adorable!
Thanks, Tessa :)

Sad part? I still have 1.5 years of my life to document. My goal is to be completely done with the first draft of this project by Christmas day.

Stats for this year's NaNoWriMo:
Most words written in one day: around 5,000 words
Least amount of words written in one day: 0 (this happened twice... one of those days being today)
Cups of coffee consumed this month: I would say at least 60 (2/day). Some days I had zero, most days I had 2-5 cups. Yeah, I'm addicted.
Hours of music played while noveling: 0 (yup, did this NaNo fairly quietly)
Number of different places I wrote: 2 (my room and the school room...)
Post cards exchanged: 3 (this was super cool!)
Level of fun had writing this month on a 1 to 10 scale: 5,342,918

Thanks for a great year, everyone! Mom, Dad, sisters, family, friends... y'all are all awesome!
I have several friends participating this year. Some won, others didn't quite make it. I'm proud of them all and it's just cool to be participating together and supporting each other. Writers of the world, unite! :)

Last, but not least...

30 days. 53,191 words. NaNoWriMo 2012 winner.

NaNoWriMo - The Final Days

After passing the finish line on July 31 (and then exceeding it by 400 words) I remembered why I love NaNoWriMo so much. The joy of having written so much in such a short time is extremely satisfying. I mean, I wrote a whole novel in one month, for goodness sake. I think I deserve a little satisfaction.

On day 29 I was rather lazy. I wrote a mere 600 words on that day. Day 30 picked up a little. I wrote about 1,000 words (yeah, I know, still not that much). And finally on day 31, I wrote 4,000 words which brought my novel's word count to a total of 50,400 words exactly. In my 2011 goals I said that I wanted to compete in and win NaNoWriMo 2011 with at least 100 words over the 50k goal -- and I did it!

So, you want a synopsis of Neighborhood Watch? You want to know what in the world I've been writing about for the past 31 days? Whether you want one or not... here it is (long over due - sorry!):

Military brat, Adriana Rodriguez, is moving once again just a couple of weeks before she begins her senior year of high school. Her dad's lack of consideration about moving infuriates Adriana... but there is nothing she can do about it. Her father has already accepted the position in a new place and they must move. At first, things are rough. Adriana has trouble making friends, she is still angry with her father, and then to make matters worse, she starts hallucinating... or is she? When an unlikely adventure picks up in her new home, Adriana is caught between her two neighbors. One neighbor is a young, attractive, mysterious guy who talks to Adriana but won't give her the answers she's looking for. The other neighbor, an old, creepy criminal, might be a murderer. But despite all the dangers and surprises, Adriana involves herself in all these mysteries and might actually be happy she moved after all.


Thanks for all the support I was given during July! My parents, my sisters, my friends, and especially my Savior were all a huge help in getting this book's first draft written. Speaking of my first draft... here is a pic of me proudly holding said draft:

50,400 words. 147 pages. 31 days. NaNoWriMo 2011 winner. 

NaNoWriMo- the Final Days

Well... the last 11 days I was behind every single day. No joke. I would catch up occasionally and then the next day I would get behind again. Sometime around days 20-25, I would sit at the dining room table instead of on our Lazy Boy. Wow, what a difference achair can make. It actually had to sit up straight *gasp*. Needless to say, it helped a lot. I also did some "Nuclear Weekend" (See No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty) type writing where I set the timer for forty minutes and wrote as long/fast as I could and then take a twenty minute break. I repeated this process until I made it to 1500 words. Then, take a long break (eat a meal, watch TV, read a book, talk to actual people, etc.) and do it again with another 1500 words. Then take a break. Then write again. So, I did this a few times (even though I usually only did it twice in a day rather than three times) and it helped a lot.

The last five days of NaNo ended up being pretty interesting. We were staying at a little house in New Braunfels where there was no internet access. That was sad for a couple of reasons: no e-mail, no blogging, no research for the book. But, it ended up helping a lot. On day 27 I had approximately 14,000 words left. I wrote about 3,500 on that day, 4,500 on day 28, 2,000 on day 29, and 4,000 words on day 30. It was a killer and I doubt the last 14,000 words of my book are all that great. But they are written and I am a winner with a grand total of 50,004 words.

As far as the story goes (I haven't really blogged about it) here's a synopsis:  It opens with the birth of a girl named Shiloh Ella Smith in a small town in Michigan. Her dad is a Baptist pastor there. Shiloh grew up without even leaving the state. In fact, she never even left her city unless it was for one of the families summer trips to Lake Superior. In high school, she meets a boy named JJ Wilburn. They are friends at first but by the end of high school they are sweethearts. JJ is a year older than Shiloh but as soon as she is old enough, Shiloh goes off to school with JJ that is only a couple of hours from their home (and still in the state). When he graduates college, he proposes to her. She leaves school early to marry him and JJ takes over the preaching at the Baptist church Shiloh's dad was the pastor at. They have four kids, all of them named after cities/countries that Shiloh had wanted to visit. Their names are Sydney Australia, Seoul Korea, Paris France, and Dublin Ireland (in that order). They go to the lake every summer just like Shiloh and her parents did. Shiloh's happiness does not last long enough, though, as she and Dublin both die that summer. JJ shuts down and the remaining three children have to raise themselves. Years later, the three siblings end up traveling the world together to the cities they were named after. On the trip, they find out a lot about each other, their thoughts on the past, and their faith in something bigger than themselves. 

Sorry this post is so late! Thanks for all the support from my family and friends. It was a crazy month but so much fun. This book is going to need a ton of editing but it may take me more than a month the second time around :P

120 pages!