That does it! NaNoWriMo 2014 is a Wrap!

This year I cut it closer than any other year. Instead of finishing a few days early, with bursts of productivity throughout the month and gaps where I fell behind, I kept a fairly steady pace. Plodding along (Ha! As if I just described 1,667 words a day as plodding!), until I crossed the line a few short minutes ago.

That's right I've done it! I won NaNoWriMo (and I got this nice little banner to prove it, because we all know miscellaneous images from the internet proves things! Oh, and the banner is a link.)

Now. That said, there are likely some of you that didn't participate in NaNoWriMo, or perhaps some that did participate and didn't cross the 50,000 word threshold. Well. You want to know the truth?

It doesn't matter.

That's right. I said it right here, and my word is law (on this blog anyway). 

NaNoWriMo isn't really about writing 50,000 words in 30 days. Ok, well it is. Sort of. But not really. Nay! The point of NaNoWriMo is to (follow along with me here) build good writing habits.

Whether those habits are: 

250 words a day, 7 days a week

500 words a day, 5 days a week

1,667 words a day, 7 days a week

or Eleventy-bajillion words a day, 3 days a week

What matters is consistency and habit, and learning deep down, that if you chip away at something a little each day you can do it.

Let's look at what a novel is at face value, and for the sake of argument I'll throw away my usual target of ~100,000 words and go with NaNo's 50,000 words.

50,000 is still a BIG number. There are roughly 250 words per printed page in a paperback novel. That means there are roughly 200 pages in a 50,000 word book. It's not a door stop, but we're not talking about a flimsy pamphlet either.

Starting at 0 words, putting together 50,000 of them seems nigh impossible. But, 1,667 (the daily goal of NaNoWriMo)? That's not TOO bad. I can write that in a few hours (or less if I have a really good outline and no interruptions).

After day 2? I've got a little over 3,000 words. After day 9? I've got 15,000 words. That's a BIG number right there, in a little over a week.

I likely never would have finished Crow's Blood (the idea for which came out of a NaNo novel) were it not for NaNoWriMo teaching me that chipping away at the big number with a pile of little numbers would actually get me there. I learned that I could write a full length novel.

Now, that's not to say that this year's story is done (not by a long shot), or that the 50,000 words I've written are any good. It's a Zero-draft, chances are a lot of those words are due to be scrapped and replaced with better ones in the first revision pass (and I'll do MANY revision passes). But I find it a LOT easier to revise something that exists on the page, and it's good writing habits that get them there in the first place.

Even if you don't cross that 50,000 word line to "win" NaNoWriMo, as long as you worked consistently toward the goal of writing your novel, and learned some of those good writing habits, you're still a winner.

So for everyone who partook in this month of writing dangerously and developed those good writing habits along the way.

Here. Have a Wordasaurus! You earned it.

Did you participate in NaNoWriMo? How did you do?