The Final Day of NaNo

Good grief this month has been difficult. To think, when I started November, I was doing so well with the writing. Now its the last day and I've still got six chapters to write and all my time is gone. I feel like running away screaming.

I don't honestly know what happened. Last year, I felt so focused. It was honestly the first novel I ever completed. Maybe I'm in over my head with the whole romance thing. Truly, though, this novel is actually starting to feel like a novel. I've just reached that place in the story where everything starts to get interesting.

The last week has been the hardest. I've been cutting a lot of plot from my story simply to get it finished. Otherwise, I'll be sitting there trying to get in all 65,000 words that I planned, and that will most definitely take me another week at least. There have been days where I don't want to do that (ITS CHEATING!) and so I've nearly decided to quit the story altogether as I wouldn't possibly finish in time.

Amazingly, people have been very supportive. Especially people from work, oddly enough. Many of them go to school, and have taken a literary class or two, and understand exactly how much work goes into writing a novel. These are the people that have been pushing me the most to get this done. Why? They want to read it, of course. Simply put, that will not happen. I have gone to great lengths to make sure that this story will never be linked to me, because I'm actually embarrassed by some of the things I have written. Its not that I think they're bad, but they are things I would never say aloud to the people I am closest to. So, I have the pen name ready to go if I should ever get it published. More than likely, though, I will polish it up in the months to come, get a copy printed for myself and call it a done deal. And even in that case, I'll still have the cover printed with the planned pen name.

I have likened the novel writing proccess to that of raising a child before this, and this year has definitely made that analogy stronger. This child of mine has been dificult from the start, though slightly more planned. By the time I got started with it, I was ready to have it done. We fought, we walked out on each other. Even the voices wouldn't cooperate.

I intend to spend my whole day tomorrow (No work for me, YAY!) trying to get it finished. I don't think I will get all sixty thousand some words written like I wanted to in the beginning, but I will get to the point where I can write 'the end' as fast as possible, and keep writing until its time to submit.

That's the plan anyway. If you don't see me on Twitter, its because I'm avoiding the distraction. I'll try to check in before submission though, and you can all kick my butt into gear! ;D