tag's Haven

Well, I’ve done it. I’ve hit 50,000 words (actually, 50,044 as of this time). I originally meant to get to this point by last Monday, but… well, having sinus migraines for three days can kind of interfere with your writing. Wasn’t fun. So, it’s now Friday morning (early Friday morning). I reached 49,545 words – along with the start of Chp. 7 of Lost and Found – by midnight, less than an hour ago. Since then, I’ve passed the finish line. Yay me!

But there’s definitely still more to go. I have a goal aside from finishing Lost and Found for NaNoWriMo this year. It involves Toronto’s Word War. This year, unlike other years, we aren’t competing against a different city – we’ve won the last several, and it’s started to get just a wee bit boring. So we’re competing against ourselves. There are five main teams (I’m on Team Book Wyrms, and at the moment, we’re winning!), along with Team Overachiever, which is made up of those who made over 100,000 words last year. And every Word War team member who makes over 100,000 words this year will be put on Team Overachiever as well as their own team.

Why is this so important, you wonder?

Well, aside from the fact that I have a feeling that Lost and Found, like the prequel Search and Rescue, will be over 100K words, and I’d really like to finish the first draft by the 30th… Team Overachiever is participating in a donation drive for The Office of Letters and Light, which is NaNoWriMo’s parent, non-profit company. For every half million (500 thousand) words written by Team Overachiever, you pledge how much you want to donate, and then at the end of the month, donate it. So I want to help that. I won’t hit 500K words, I know that much, but my 100K+ will definitely count.

I believe in what OLL wants to do, admire the help they provide for the Young Writers’ Program (kids in school and under 12 who participate in NaNoWriMo), and want to encourage writers to participate in events such as NaNoWriMo. To do all that, and things that they want to do to improve both programs – as well as Script Frenzy and its accompanying Young Writers’ Program, which takes place in April – they need the help that donations provide. So I do my best to do what I can.

Anyway, the basic point of this post was to go, “Yay! I won again this year!”, and to let you know what my ambitions are for the rest of the month. Tonight I go to a write-in session at the Starbucks by the TTC Runnymede Station, and tomorrow (Saturday) to Sunday morning is the Overnight Writing Session, which I’m looking forward to as always.

To those following on my LJ who aren’t quite at the current word goal… I wrote a pep talk (now here on my LJ) for the topic shown in yesterday’s Procrastination Station, Pep Talks from the Unpublished. I do encourage you to read the thread – there are a hell of a lot of excellent pep talks from fellow NaNoers there, and one of them (or more!) might resonate with you. The originator of the topic even wrote a Pep Poem that’s a short way down the page that I found myself both laughing at and agreeing wholeheartedly with.

Will probably post another entry on Sunday to discuss today’s writing session (last week’s was wonderful) and the Overnight Session.

‘Later, all!
😉 tag0 (TrudyG)

P.S. By the way, if any NaNoers are reading this journal who haven’t friended me on NaNoWriMo, I invite you to do so. As I said in my pep talk, a large part of NaNoWriMo is the community, and the more connections we make, the more encouragement we get. And thank you to those who have posted replies to my previous NaNoWriMo entries encouraging me – every little bit helps, and it’s partly thanks to you that I’ve made it to 50K so quickly.