It's... over.

Not much has happened since my last update. There was a failed Failed Novelists outing on Saturday (failed because it rained too much for us to head out to the nunnery we were going to go to, we couldn't find space in the first two pubs we tried and had to settle for an ice cream shop, and I was too worn out from noveling all day to be much fun), but I had a wonderful milkshake so that makes everything so, so much better. There was more noveling and more tutorializing and so on and so forth. I picked out my tutorials for the next two terms (I think) and confirmed that I don't need to take collections (I think), but otherwise school is winding down and it's a lot more calm now that it's 8th Week.

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Yesterday, I had a small crisis. It was the 30th of November, and I still needed at least 5,000 words in order to get to my amended goal. Now, usually I bribe myself with chocolate every few thousand words/chapter so that I can keep on track and get going. It's a delicious system.

So, I showed up to eat chocolate and finish novels, and I was all outta chocolate. No, seriously. I was all outta chocolate. This necessitated a last-minute Sainsbury's trip after dinner last night to get the emergency rations. Never fear, though: I did make it through November with my sanity intact (mostly, though the Failed Novelists still seem to know me as 'that one girl with the unholy word count). I finished at 11:00PM GMT, and after a small panic with the validator on the NaNo site, settled in with my wonderful purple bar of awesome. Congrats, me.

I feel very strange now that November is over. The end of term is this Friday so it's a little weird to be finally caught up only to realize that there is no more catching up to do. I'm glad it's done, though, so I can enjoy the rest of this week:
- Last L+L lecture
- Last Ethics tutorial
- Formal Christmas dinner
- Last Ethics lecture
- Last L+L tutorial
- Failed Novelists Thank God It's Over get-together
- Formal guest dinner
- Christmas bop

Lots of stuff going on and I'm excited to be a part of it.

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To reward myself for the end of NaNo, I went out shopping this morning. I bought myself a surprise that I'll show everyone over Christmas, as well as put a sweaterdress on hold. But I'm more excited for the things I bought online:
- Circular 16" and double-pointed size 10.5 bamboo needles (yeah, I'm a knitting nerd too)
- Lion brand Jiffy yarn, 2 skeins each of 3 colors (can't tell you what colors, they're needed for Christmas presents for my friends!)
- This (trust me, it will help my poor hands)
- This shirt (because if it's good enough for Jayne Cobb it's good enough for you)

I'm so excited to get home and see all the things I've ordered waiting for me! And trust me, I deserve them all.

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Just to give you all an idea of how NaNoWriMo went for me this year, I'm going to put up some statistics that I think illustrate my point pretty well. (I came up with a little worksheet last night, but apparently Blogger doesn't support tables.)

Goal Word Count: 100,000 (set in October) / 175,000 (set in Week 2 of November)
(2007: 60,000 | 2008: 75,000)
Actual Word Count: 176,756 (in two novels, ten drabbles, and two short stories; that is, not including schoolwork like essays, forum posts, blog posts, etc.)
(2007: 61,761 in one novel | 2008: 88,306 in one novel)
[In case you're still keeping track, this means that I actually more than DOUBLED last year's total word count.]

Total Hours Writing: 78:03
(2007: n/a | 2008: 40:26)
Average Hours Per Day: 2:36
(2007: n/a | 2008: 1:21)

Average Words Per Hour: 2,206
(2007: n/a | 2008: 2,181)
Fastest Words Per Hour: 3,387 on November 30
(2007: n/a | 2008: 3,993 on November 17)

Average Words Per Day: 5,892
(2007: calculating | 2008: 2,944)
Most Words Per Day: 12,378 on November 13
(2007: 5,719 on November 1 | 2008: 10,016 on November 1)
Number of Five Digit Days (days with 10,000+ words): 3
(2007: 0 | 2008: 1)

Number of days not making personal daily goal: 3
(2007: 15 | 2008: 7)
Number of days not making NaNo daily goal: 0
(2007: 11 | 2008: 7)
Number of days with no writing: 0
(2007: 6 | 2008: 3)

Day passed NaNo overall goal: November 9
(2007: November 19 | 2008: November 14)
Day passed personal overall goal: November 18
(2007: November 26 | 2008: November 23)

As you can see, every year I've improved. I think part of that is discipline and part of that is circumstances. I'm at a place in my life where I easily structure my own days, without much that I have to do in the 'outside world.' At ND I would easily be in lecture until 4 in the afternoon and still have to do work that might take until 10 at night. Here, I got up early and instead of going to lecture (or on top of going to lecture), I would read for my tutorials and write my essays before dinner. Then I would go out and eat in hall and come back, sit down in front of the keyboard and either take a 1-2 hour break or finish my essays, then get cracking on writing around 8 PM. Of course, there are days where I wrote more or less, but I think these statistics say a lot. And I'm quite proud of how much I've improved this year.

I also appear to have picked up a technical editor as a matter of course. It's nice to have found a beta reader who really is my ideal reader (my AI novel was definitely targeted to the geeky audience and was meant to have a near-future scientific appeal, so good job on me for writing for my audience). I'm actually not embarrassed of Lucid Proxy and that's a change for me: I haven't liked any of my other NaNo novels I've produced so far.

NaNo does an offer for winners that they can create a free CreateSpace proof copy for their manuscripts, redeemable by 30 May. So, if I can get my novel cleaned up and into second draft mode, I'll definitely send it through and possibly put it up for order through Amazon.com (CreateSpace assigns ISBNs to all proof copies, apparently, and I can vanity-press it and get a portion of the proceeds from each copy sold). However, I don't think I'll put it up on Amazon if I do, because if I can clean it up enough and target a few publishing houses, I could really get this thing out there.

Also speaking of NaNo, it was interesting being on the forums last night. There have been two writers whose progress I've been following, Kateness and CrimsonBlood, who both made it to a million words during the month. Yes, it's possible. These two girls have ungodly typing speed and outlines ahoy, and they know how they work and they structure their days so that they can get their work done on their time. I know for sure that Kateness has been unemployed this month (not by her own volition) and so she had the time and energy to reach the 1mil, but I think Crim might still be in some kind of school; she talks about homework on the forums a lot. Anyways, if you think MY accomplishment was a big deal, check these people out. (Yes, they have actually validated, but the validator on the NaNo site only goes up to 999,999 in order not to collapse the universe.)

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So... I do still have an Ethics tutorial tomorrow, and I haven't started the essay yet. However, I have the whole rest of the day (like, 10 hours, guys!) to finish two final chapters of reading and pound out 2,500 words on the concept of free will. This looks easy as pie compared to what I've been doing this month. It also helps that I love reading about things like this, and that I've been gobbling up the literature over the past two days.

Also, I have a 230g half-finished bar of Cadbury Dairy Milk (most delicious chocolate ever) on my desk (and "Super Freak" just started playing in iTunes). Life is good.

- Jen -