As of approximately 11:30 this evening, I have unequivocally crossed the 50,000-word mark on the novel I have been writing this month for NaNoWriMo and so it is my pleasure to announce that, according to their rules, I have successfully completed the challenge: a 50,000-word novel written between midnight on November 1 and midnight on December 1 in the year 2001. I technically have a chapter left to write, and I am certain that what I have already written will undergo substantial rewrites, as my brilliant erotic farce about the decadent lives of bored white suburban upper-middle class married people and their mentally ill children with serious skin conditions has, within the last ten thousand words I have written, devolved into sentimental pap. (As such, the new working title for the book is Sentimental Pap.) However, the NaNoWriMo challenge allows for rewrites and chapter additions later on. I am now free to finish this genius work at my leisure, have it printed up at some vanity press or other, and have it distributed to libraries and adult book stores everywhere.

Factoids:
• 51,049 words, including chapter titles and one character named “Mary Beth” whose name is said often
• 94 pages at 12 point single-spaced Times New Roman – the single longest thing I’ve ever written
• The word “fuck” appears in its various forms a total of eighty-seven times
• Thirty-one significant characters, eleven of whom play significant roles in multiple chapters, seven of whom could be defined as “protagonists”
• Page after page of horrible, horrible prose

Things I will do now that I have fifty thousand words:
• Bathe
• Eat
• Clean my apartment
• Change the kitty litter
• Catch up on world events
• Step outside, shielding my eyes from the blinding sun
• Drink myself into a stupor
• Have a pee
• Sleep

Meanwhile, rest well in the knowledge that I Have Written a Novel and You (Possibly) Have Not.

Hello, my darlings. I have not written in a few days. I would like to say that the reason I have been away for such a long time is that I have been hard at work on my novel. You remember, the one that I’m writing for NaNoWriMo? Unfortunately, my bastard schedule continues to consume much of my time, and I am now hovering at about twenty thousand words, or about forty percent completion. It’s going to be pretty entertaining to see how screwed up I’m going to be by the end of the month, as I am already unravelling at the seams. Why, right now I have a painful ingrown hair on my inner thigh, and I just used a scissor to open up a liquidy blister on my right heel. My apartment is an absolute sty and I have no interest in reversing its deterioration. I continue to lose larger and larger amounts of hair every time I shower. My poor neglected cat has been biting me at least twice as often as usual.

And that’s a whole paragraph I could have devoted towards the novel. I hope you’re happy.

24,000 words, and I am psychopathic. But I have finally given myself a reason to use the working title Tracy Naked. ¡Pon eso en tu pipa y fúmalo!

I am at 14,000 words. Ow, my head!

All right. Still working on novel. At 11,400 words. Goal for tomorrow: 15,000. Can I do it? Don’t know. Want badly to sleep. So tired. So. Tired.

8,225 words. Goal for tomorrow: 11,000.

Hi. I have now written approximately 10% of my NaNoWriMo novel. Only nine more bits of text that length to go! And I’ve only got twenty-one days to finish! Let’s see. 45,000 words dived by twenty-one days equals ~2,143 words per day. Can I do it? Um, maybe.

I find that the most difficult thing about doing this is just the scope of it all. I want to get to the story already, but as length is the goal, I must write with length in mind. It does not help matters that my chapters usually find natural endings after three pages or so. There is also the not-trivial-issue of characters forgetting their motivations in the course of a few paragraphs. I should really start keeping a chart. Screw that for now, though. There’ll be time for that in December!

3000 words and counting

At this writing, my novel approaches two thousand words, which encompasses the whole of one chapter and a sentence of the next. I have a new working title, too: Oi Godoi, or possibly Oy Gadoy, pronounced like it’s spelled. And this title, nonsensical as it may sound, will actually be in some way connected to the plot, assuming I get to that chapter. Write on!