I’m a winner!
Just validated my word count, and it feels oh so good to have a machine tell me I’ve won! I find this especially ironic, given that the main robot in my novel is often the announcer of truths. I am quite pleased by this accomplishment, especially having reached 50,000 words in sixteen days.
Night of Writing Dangerously
Officially, I won at the Night of Writing Dangerously, a NaNoWriMo fundraising gala held in San Francisco. I got to ring a bell and wear a crown and announce my accomplishment to all of twitter! It was wonderful to be a part of such a public celebration of writing.
Too often, we writers are the only source of our own validation. That is a huge bummer. While I don’t need someone telling me I’m the Greatest Writer of All Time, I do need other people to remind me that what I do is work. It is hard work; it is worthy work. This is same sort of validation I look for when trying to break my dog of eating everything in sight. It’s a reminder that while we may not all experience the same difficulties in life, the life you are living is valid.
So celebrating my win surrounded by 300+ other writers was excellent validation. And motivation! My manuscript is much too short to sell, clocking in at under 55,000 words. I’m already hard at work editing and hope to have it out to betas soon. In the meantime, though, I am proud of my blitz two weeks of writing, and excited to have raised so much for the NaNoWriMo Young Writer’s Program!
Executive Director Grant Faulkner & I