NaNoWriMo Results

I wanted to post this pic of Dunvegan Castle - the castle that houses the Fairy Flag relic that inspired me to write my novel- because today marks a significant moment in my writing life: it's the day I entered my first writing contest since high school, when I entered and won a Pennsylvania Keystone Award for Journalism... 18 years ago.

For those of you who have been following my NaNoWriMo adventure, you may recognize that today is the last day of November and therefore you're probably wondering if I successfully wrote a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.

Well, yes and no. I wrote about 8,000 words of a new project, then decided to go back to my longstanding novel project and re-wrote about 40,000 words of that and added an additional 20,000 so I guess I did meet my goal but I'm not submitting my work officially to NaNoWriMo. Why? Well, I don't think I stayed true to the task. I didn't write a new, 50,000 word novel in a month. I may have written over 50,000 words, but my novel is still not finished so I don't think it's fair to enter it.

Instead, I entered the Gotham Writer's Workshop contest detailed here:

http://www.writingclasses.com/ContestPages/YAPitch.php

This contest is more of a pitch contest where writers send the title and the first 250 words of a young adult novel. According to blog.nanowrimo.org, "The top 20 submissions will be read by editors at HarperCollins, Penguin, Harlequin, Random House, and Sourcebooks. Those judges will then pick the top five winners out of that twenty, and the top five winners will receive commentary on their submissions as well as a 15-minute, one-on-one pitch session with YA literary agent Regina Brooks".

Let me tell ya, it was NOT easy putting those 250 words together; in fact, it was probably one of the toughest writing tasks I've ever faced but I did it and I'm fairly happy with the results but more importantly, I'm proud that I've taken a step outside of head and my laptop toward realizing my goal.

So, What's La Pointe of It All? Well, I've figured out a few things about myself as a writer and whereas I do think I work well under pressure, I don't think I'll ever attempt NaNoWriMo again because there's pressure and then there's PRESSURE and I only work well under the lower cap one.