A Light at the End of the Tunnel…

…And it ain’t an oncoming train. With 76,883 words done, the end is in sight. While busily writing away on the story, an idea for ‘The End’ came to me and now I have a definite path on which to take this story.

With so much going on between the holiday season and completing articles for my new blog, I don’t think I’m going to make much progress on the story this weekend. My new blog is going to be a departure from writing. It’s going to be more of a journal of something new I am trying – with several different facets. Once I have it the way I want, I’ll announce it here as well as other places.

After getting home from work yesterday and sitting down to a fantastic birthday dinner, I was happy to tell my youngest daughter that J.K. Rowling just announce the title for the last Harry Potter book as ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’. She was anxious to know when it is coming out, but I told her that J.K. is reportedly still working on the book and no date has been set for its release.

It’s hard to believe that when my daughters started reading Harry Potter, they were 9 and 7 years old – in elementary school. Now they are 17 and 15 – in high school. By the time the last book is released, my oldest daughter will be in college and have no time at all to read this long awaited last book. Sarah, my youngest daughter, is a rabid fan of the series and will no doubt put aside everything to get and read the last book. She simply can’t wait for it to come out.

For several of the books, we have been among the thousands of maniacs standing in line for hours outside of Barnes & Noble waiting for the doors to open at midnight to get our eager hands on one of the coveted copies. There’s no way my kids could wait until the next day. It’s actually quite fun and festive, and with the release of ‘Half-Blood Prince’ in 2005, B&N really had come up with a great system. We were about 500 and something down the line, but from the time the doors opened to the time we walked out with our copies of the book was only about 15 minutes. They efficiently organized the lines and had a regiment of cashiers on hand to handle the crowds.

We got home before 1 AM, and I went right to bed, but not my girls. On the way home they read in the car with flashlights and then stayed up all night in their bedrooms reading. They rested little and ate little. They devoured the 650+ pages in a little over 2 days. Sarah took a break for a couple of days and re-read it again – two more times that summer.

J.K. Rowling has accomplished something every writer wishes they could – achieving legendary status. It goes beyond money and fame. Joanne and her Harry Potter works will be remembered and studied for decades, maybe even hundreds of years, after she is gone.

I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas, and the best of New Year’s. May each of you get what you truly want from life.

With Warmest Regards,

~Werner~

And Still Going…

65,157 words and counting. With the self-imposed pressure of meeting the NaNo deadline gone, the writing has slowed some, but I’ve still made good progress. The story is moving well, and I’m not sure how long this novel will be.

With the holidays coming up, I will have less and less time to write. However, I feel the need to keep putting the story down on the page – to get it out there – out of my head. I don’t expect I will be done by Christmas, but might by New Year’s.

I still read Angie Hoy’s – Writer’s Weekly, Mur Lafferty’s – I Should Be Writing, and of course the NaNoWriMo Forums for motivation to write and a sense of community.

Predictions

So let’s see how I did with the predictions I made about NaNoWriMo back on October 3rd. I predicted the following results:

1,000,000,000 (Billion) words will be written
83,000 People will Participate
14,000 Participants will be Winners (getting to 50,000 words)

And here are the official statistics of NaNoWriMo 2006 as reported on the NaNoWriMo.org website:

Total Word Count: 982,564,701
Authors (Participants): 79,813
Winners: 12,948

If we include the 11M or so words from the YWP site we almost make it to 1 billion but not quite. As the majority of students doing YWP don’t have a login on the site, we suspect that we really did crack the billion barrier in 2006, but I guess 2007 will be the official first billion-word year for NaNoWriMo.

I was a little optimistic in my numbers, but I was still pretty darn close.

After taking a few days off, I started work on my novel again. I am determined to finish it even if I am not considering trying to publish it. I felt refreshed and the words came pretty easily. I’m only going to do weekly word counts now instead of daily.

Now that NaNo has ended this year, the writing feels that much more solitary. I’ll get over it, I have a whole winter of writing ahead of me.

And So It Ends

I can hardly believe that 30 days have vanished. I feel like the nervous anticipation I had of starting NaNo was only last week. Even as I worked on my novel, I was keenly aware of the month rushing by. I had my high’s and I had my low’s – where I either didn’t want to write or got stuck. Those times seem like they lasted only moments or are like a memory of a fading dream.

Of the past six-years of NaNo, this one went by the quickest, but I also had the most fun with NaNoWriMo of any year I’ve participated. This year I have made more friends and connections than I ever have, and it’s also the first year I maintained a blog while writing my novel. I am astounded and pleased that it has received over 525 views to date.

I started out thinking I was going to write a “living dead/zombie” story, but ended up writing a pirate story. It was something I wanted to do for a long time. I am going to finish it, but I’m unsure if I am going to try and get it published.

I have no doubt that I will finish ‘Blood‘. I have all this story still in my head that I have to get it out onto the page. I will continue to update this blog until I am done. Working on this novel has given me such a sense of accomplishment and a sense of possibility. I am embarking upon some new and exciting things in the upcoming months and by the time NaNoWriMo 2007 rolls around, there are going to be a lot of positive changes that have been made.

I will be creating another blog about all of these new developments and changes and will announce it here when I get it going.

I wish all of my fellow Wrimo’s the best and hope to see everyone in 2007!