I Won NaNoWriMo!

I went pretty quiet on the internet for the whole month of November because I was focusing on writing my story, but I guess that was a good thing, because last night at around 11:30 PM, I hit 50,222 words and won NaNoWriMo!

I started out the month really great with 3,450 words on the first day, and despite some weird things happening in the first few weeks (really out of the blue stuff!) I pretty much stayed on target, being generally above par. Until the troublesome, infamous Week 3… In preparation for the video Kristen and I made for Michishige Sayumi’s graduation, I set a lot aside in order to power through recording and mixing, and my word count suffered at that point (but it was worth it, I think! Congratulations, Sayumin!)

Basically, I was at least day behind for every day after the 19th! It was frustrating because it had been going so well in the first two weeks ;A;

Then, when I was watching Youtube during a break (tried to get some Japanese study in there, though my WaniKani reviews have piled to nearly 400…), a recommended video showed up on the side that was by katytastic on Youtube (one of her recent live shows). When she talked about how doing word sprints helped her crank out 16K words in one day when she had been 10K behind, I got inspired and decided to give word sprints a chance! And let me tell you, they really do work!

My method was basically going back and finding holes in scenes I’d already established, and filling in that space, fleshing them out, and whenever I had an idea, I would immediately write it. I started doing word sprints on the 28th, and then powered through on the 29th for a day of 4,320 words. ;v;

I have to say that it was a lot more fun this year, and there may be multiple reasons for that, but at the same time I’m glad that I can take a break now! XD I really love my story and my characters, and I’ve definitely added a lot to the overall story, but it’s nice to not have the pressure of having to write 1,667 words every day! Hopefully what I’ve learned from NaNo will help me to continue writing at a better pace in general, so that I can begin uploading my story soon. My goal for that is June or July next year, or sooner if I can finally get satisfied with the first chapter XD.

*sigh* What’s funny is that I’m not sure what to do now that I don’t have a mission to write… Lol

Time to pull out the to-do list again!

And…maybe take a nap…