The most unacheivable goal, done.

You may have noticed, but after I blogged about hitting the half-way mark for the word count on my novel, I stopped updating you. This is what I had to do from then until now:

1) Implement a bachelorette party for my sister. Said bachelorette party will soon be detailed in "The best blog ever," but for right now, I don't have time to write it. But I have fabulous material for it.

2) Parent-teacher conferences.

3) Thanksgiving.

4) Scan a close 100 baby photos and create a slideshow for my sister's wedding (this took over 8 hrs, btw).

5) Pick up my bridesmaid dress.

6) Write a toast to give at the wedding.

7) Watch The Office.

8) Write another twenty-five thousand words.

It was a crazy week and a half, and if it wasn't for those days off from work due to the holiday, I never would have gotten it all done. But I am pleased to share with you that I FINISHED MY NOVEL. ALL 50,000 WORDS OF IT! Yes, I am a winner for the National Novel Writing Month. Busted that puppy out in 29 days. Once I got to 26,000, and I was ten thousand behind on my schedule, I felt like quitting. But I didn't toil over such a project just to quit. Basically, that is why I participated in NaNoWriMo this year, to prove to myself that during a time in my life where I am feeling like I'm not good at anything, that no one believes in me, I can do it. I am not a quitter. I am good at something.

I finished at 6:11pm last night with 50,038 words and five hours to spare. Many of the hours spent were torturous. But if I hadn't sat in front of that screen with a word count goal to reach, a lot of the stuff that I wrote never would have come into existence. In case you were wondering more about NaNoWriMo (which I know you weren't, but I'm going to share with you any way), the goal is to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. You are not allowed to start early and you have to be done by the 30th. Everyone who hits 50k is a winner. 119,301 authors signed up this year and 21,683 won. I am a part of that. Making Oregon proud, Portland came in as the 9th wordiest region in the nation. To check out my winner page (which you totally should, even though it means nothing to you, but it means a lot to me because I worked my butt off for it), you should go to my user profile. I know that purple bar doesn't look like much, but it used to be blue and it filled up little by little. And that stupid bar graph? Damn days 16 and 26. But the worst day was day 28, when I wrote over 9,000 words at a time.

I know this sounds pathetic, but you can only access the above image if you are a winner. Your eyes shouldn't have even seen this, because you have not written 50,000 words.

Now, you might be like "oh, cool. Joelle wrote an entire novel in one month." Maybe you want to read it now. Well, sorry, but I guess I kind of lied. I totally met my 50k goal, but the novel is not done yet. I've written 96 pages (single spaced, size 12 font), but the story isn't complete. I've still got to fill in the missing puzzle pieces and link it all together. And after that: revision. Then editing. I read this analogy (or something along these lines): writing a novel is like making a stone sculpture. Michelangelo chiseled away bit by bit to leave his masterpiece, but we do not see all of the work he put into it. Sure, we see the statue, but the part the sucked up the most time and effort now lays as the dust on the floor. You don't see any of that because it got swept up and thrown out. I'm still chiseling and the dust is still falling away from the masterpiece. You won't see that. But I feel like scooping up that dirt and keeping it in a ziploc baggy to look at, because the amount of time and effort it took was enormous.

This whole process was a thousand times more meaningful to me than to you. In fact, you may not even have gotten to the end of this blog because I bored you. Sorry. But this experience has given me hope. I am not a quitter. I am dedicated. I will reach my goals. With no one left to believe in me, I rediscovered the one person that always will.

P.S. This blog was 802 words. But who's counting?