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.