50,000 words in 30 days? No problem!

I typed the final words to bring my story of The Last Sin Eater over 50,000 words this afternoon. It's a great feeling to know you've written so much on one subject, regardless of how good or bad that may turn out to be once you go back through it, becauseit proves that you can stick with a story for more than a few hours at a time.

Of course, the story isn't finished yet. Over the last few days I've thought of several places where the story should change direction, and looking back over some of what I've written, I can see a lot of places where I've just been world building or writing character profiles rather than moving the story on.

But the bones of the story are in place. I now know my characters really well, I know their world and their situations, and even if it's not all down on paper yet, I know where I want them to end up.

At the start of November quite a lot of people - and a lot of those were in creative writing forums on the OU website - said they didn't see what use NaNoWriMo was. They complained that you couldn't possibly write a good novel in one month, and that it was a waste of time.

Those people, I can't help but feel, have not grasped what NaNoWriMo is about.

It's morning pages gone into overdrive; it's an outflowing of creativity every day; it's getting a draft of a story down on paper that might otherwise have languished in your imagination for years; and it's a challenge to be overcome so you can look back and say, "well look at that, maybe I could write a book after all".

And there is nothing useless or un-worthwhile about that at all.