NaNoWriMo – I'm a winner!

You may remember that a few weeks ago I made the rather rash decision to join NaNoWriMo 2010 (National Novel Writing Month). The challenge? To write a 50,000 word novel within the month of November.

Well, I am extremely proud today to be able to say… I DID IT! 😀

I was so thrilled when I got to 50,000 words, but heartbroken when I copied and pasted my novel into the website and found that it was apparently 500 or so words short. I’m not sure what caused that, but I think perhaps it had some way of knowing that I was trying to cheat by having my characters sing Hey Jude at karaoke (“na na na na na na na!”).  Anyway, I quickly bashed out another few hundred words, and now my official word count on the NaNoWriMo website reads 50,020. (My unofficial word count, according to my computer, is 50,492. That’s 83 pages, by the way.)

Once I had officially “won”, I was taken to the winner’s page of the website. The page read:

Author, on November 1 you accepted our challenge to write a novel in 30 days. Harnessed with a hard deadline, you persevered in the face of countless obstacles. You wrote with determination, you quieted that inner critic, and now you’ve reached the hallowed Winner’s Circle.

We couldn’t be more proud of your amazing accomplishment! Thank you for joining us on this outrageously creative adventure—we’ll see you next November for more.

Well, actually, I accepted the challenge on November 11th, but I still “persevered in the face of countless obstacles”, such as work, work, work and work. I don’t want to blow my own horn or anything, but boy am I feeling chuffed right now.

So, a couple of people have asked me if they will be able to read it. The answer to that is “not yet”. I’m really serious about this novel, and I think it could be good. I’ll edit it over the next few months, as and when I have time, and then I will have to think about what to do next. Honestly, I’d like to get it published of course, but I really don’t know how I will go about that, and if it’s good enough. There are parts I’m pretty darn proud of, and parts I know I need to chuck out and rewrite. But I think it had potential.

So, I will leave you with this tiny teaser…

Alice’s Adventures: A Year in Japan

I felt a little like my namesake, Alice, when she discovers the cake marked “eat me” and the bottle marked “drink me”. Never quite sure what I was about to eat or drink, or what effect it would have on me. Would I suddenly shrink to the size of a grain of rice, or grow to the size of Godzilla? Who could tell. Anything, it seemed, was possible in this land.

P.S. If any agents/publishers happen to read this, please feel free to contact me! 😉