Strange Brouhaha

Sunday, November 27, 2005

Eighty-seven words to spare

After two tries, where the official counting program didn't give me the same count as NeoOffice/J and I had to tack on extra endings, I finally managed to push my word total up over the official 50,000 mark. According to the "winner's page" at nanowrimo.org, 80% of participants don't finish, for whatever reason.

It was an interesting journey. I'm not necessarily sure I'd do it again, but there was certainly nothing objectionable about it. The most difficult parts were the first 10,000 and the last 10,000 words--the first because beginnings are tough, and the last because motiviation and inspiration dried up when the finish line was in sight. The middle just seemed to kind of melt past.

I've added the official winner's graphic to the sidebar (just scroll down). There's also a nice little banner on my profile page.

Update: Huh. The winner's page also says that the middle is "notoriously difficult". I must just be weird, because the middle 30,000 words were nothing compared with the last five or ten thousand. I didn't even really want to write at all today.

4 Comments:

  • (MattK) Way to go Robert!

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 9:55 AM  

  • I'm really proud too--good job, honey.

    Rob said he finds it hard to believe the NaNoWriMo website's claim that 80% of participants don't finish. Not me. I'm sure some of it is partly due to getting hung up on quality when quantity has to take precedence under the circumstances. But mostly, writing is just plain hard. So--good job, honey (again).

    Now start the next one!

    By Blogger Savannah, at 11:09 AM  

  • And with days to spare! That's awesome, sir. A literary supermarathon.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 11:52 AM  

  • Beauty, eh!

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 3:30 PM  

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