Except, you know. In the fridge. Thanks to the wonderful kindness of friends, sharing their bounty of leftovers with us. Don’t think they didn’t. That wasn’t the turkey I was talking about.
Okay, so maybe that wasn’t the best hook. But…didn’t I tell you my word count today would be better? Two word wars and 2,031 sweet little morsels of progress.
Damn, I’m good. Modest, too. I’m at 44,809 words. A little over five thousand to win. I’m going to have to pad a bit, though. No way what I have left to write will take 5k. That’s all right. NaNo is about quantity, not quality. I can edit later. And after taking out the padding, I’ll be adding in some important stuff like description and characterization. Stuff I shot right past the first time through.
So why even do it? Especially when I know I can write a complete novel without subjecting myself to this?
Because it’s fun. That’s the first answer. Some people like to go to concerts and scream along with people who feel the same way they do about the band. Some like to go shopping the day after Thanksgiving and fight the mobs to emerge victorious. I like to write. And I like to do it in the madness that is NaNo, with thousands of like-minded people. It’s a combination of both my examples–there is competition, but it’s with myself. Trying to better my own record, not to break someone else’s. And there is cheering–but it’s for me and my fellow NaNoers, not the guys up there who can’t even hear us anyway.
The second reason is no writing is ever wasted. I learned things writing this book, as I do every time I write. I learned I can stick in a footnote and go on, I don’t have to stop the flow and go research and get sidetracked and not get back to the story that day. I can simply highlight the fact I’ve used “walked” twice within ten words of each other, and know that I’ll fix it later instead of dragging out the thesaurus (I keep it handy, but hidden, we have a love-hate relationship) and spending the next twenty minutes chasing synonyms. I can set a timer and write frantically for thirty minutes and come out with a thousand words of mostly-usable progress. Let me repeat that–I have learned that in HALF AN HOUR I can write more than I used to write on a typical after-work writing evening. I used to average about 800 words in the time between dinner and bedtime. Those days are gone.Â
Third–I have another completed novel. That makes five. And one three-quarters done, and one just begun. Several more planned. But one more COMPLETED novel is a lot better than one more half-started, isn’t it?Â
Fourth–(though the order is just as I thought of them, not the priority!) I’ve made friends. Writing friends, people who understand where I’m trying to go, and will support my getting there. People who might even, one day soon (since many of them will have completed novels too!) be in a position to give me a hand.
I haven’t lost anything but time I could have devoted to TV. Hope has participated and had fun, and may even still win. We re-evaluated her goal and re-set it to a thousand words, and she’s more than halfway there. She may have been told “I’m in a word war!” a few times more than she cared to hear it, but this will still be a good experience for her.  Win or no, she will have tried, and that’s a good thing.
Besides, it gave me something to do while waiting to see if my SASEs come back. Did I forget to mention I’m querying agents?
Okay, so nobody asked why I jumped into NaNo. That’s still why I did it. And why I’m going to win. Then I and my fellow writers will jump up and down screaming for a while, and then we will get back to work. Next up, NaNoPubYe–National Novel Publishing Year.
Onward!Â