This evening NaNoWriMo 2006 draws to a close, and I get to enjoy the feeling of a job well done.This year I managed to actually go the distance, and yes, that is a damn good feeling.
I only wrote the first third of the novel I set out to write - however, I think it ended up more coherant than it would have otherwise, so that's a plus. And, of course, it leaves me with material to continue with if I undertake this madness next year.
In the end, it sucked up a bunch of time I likely would have otherwise spent playing video-games. It let me test my limits, and let me actually prove that I can sit down and write something extensive. One of my old writing teachers told me that every person in the world has stories in their head they could tell, but you only are a writer if you sit down and write them.
That doesn't make you a good writer, mind you. That's the next step.
But the first step is writing, and this is the first time I've produced a clearly finished work of significant length. It isn't as long as a standard novel, it isn't a masterpiece, and I quake in fear at actually showing it off to my friends and family who demand a chance to read it. The narrative voice is constantly shifting, I'm not entirely positive I maintained the same tense throughout the work, and the most interesting character is an ordinary housecat. The dialogue is poor, the plot resorts to exposition, and the proofreading was nonexistant.
...but it is complete, and it is mine, and I can be damn proud of that.
And that's what the month is all about.
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