Although there are still a few hours left till the end of NaNoWriMo, I’ve turned in my count. I’m not a winner for writing 50,000 words this month, but I did write 37,000 words, all on the same story so… yeah! 37 K!

Looking back, here are some of the things I learned this month:

* Since I like to keep my promises, signing up for National Novel Writers Month was a scary thing.

* About every day I worried that I wouldn’t make the 50 K.

* I wrote just about every day, anyway.

* Even today, when I knew I wouldn’t make the extra 13 K, I still wrote.

* What I wrote was drivel. I knew it at the time, but counted the words, anyway. It was really bad whenever I went back to see what I’d written and then deleted most of it! The rest of what I wrote this month will have to be either deleted, revised, or seriously rewritten sometime later.

* It was great to work on just one piece of writing at a time v.s. many (story) sticks in the fire.

* I’m a procrastinater.

* I work best in the morning. By mid-afternoon, you could find me staring mindlessly unproductive at a blinking curser on my computer screen.

* Family comes before writing. I’ve always believed that, but this month several major things happened: my father was/is dying; our son and DIL came for a wonderful 5-day visit; DH got to see his first-ever Packers game, live; me, too; my brother got laid off of work; I accepted the position of co-chair of another writers’ conference next October when the one co-chair up and quit. (I know that last one isn’t really family, but it was a major time-commitment.)

* I cheat. (So do lots of other NaNoWriMo folk, but that’s no justification for it.)  I counted each day’s date and each time I wrote in caps about research questions. It was still NaNo story related. (Defensive, aren’t I?) At first, I was really good about just sticking to the story. Then I spent a day working just on plot. That felt great. Another couple days I spent writing autobiographies on some of the major characters; this not only rounded them out, but I also discovered each of their voices.

* I spend way too much time reading and answering emails.

* I must always remember to save periodically, so when I press a combination of magic key strokes, I don’t erase an hour’s worth of work!

* I will probably do NaNoWriMo next year.