Day 463 - All Good Things Must Come to An End

Today is the last day of National Novel Writing Month.  For me, it's the end of round two of the challenge to write 50,000 words in the thirty days of November.

Last year, I tore through the challenge like it was nothing.  Granted, I had and still have a number of unfinished creative writing projects, and Suite101 was in the midst of a thirty articles in thirty days challenge that I was also taking part in.  Including creative projects, work, and "The Years Spent PC," I had plenty of words to clear the 50K mark and print out my snazzy certificate, get my purple 2009 button for my National Novel Writing Month writer profile, and collect all of my goodies and bragging rights.

This year, my sorority little sister and I both decided to participate.  After all, I had "won" last year with three days left in the month, so this year should be cake since I had already done the challenge once.  Right?

Well, it's 6:50 P.M. EST, and I am exactly 8,000 words short of the golden 50K.

Yup, that's right, I don't think I'm going to slay this beast, folks.

I thought about ways I could win.  I thought about going through my Twitter feed and copying all of my tweets for the month - after all, I had written every one of those words.  I thought about all of the emails I had sent, the GRE essays I had written, and all of the extraneous words that I had penned throughout the past thirty days simply doing what I do every day.  I even thought about calling off from the Job from Hell today to see if I could pull what was a total of 11,500 out of my butt before 11:59 tonight, but I realized that I would more than likely sleep in and lounge on the couch watching TLC all morning, eat lunch, and then find something else to occupy my time all afternoon until I realized the real reason I needed the day to myself.

Needless to say, I went to work today.

But then again, I've looked at everything I have done throughout the month and realized that, even though I won't get the cool little certificate to hang on my wall next to the one from last year, I have completed a challenge.  I have written over 42,000 words (the word counter always adds words for some reason) on top of working 40 hours a week, studying for the biggest test of my life, and taking the GRE on top of it all.  In addition, I've been writing for Suite101 and finishing up graduate school applications.

In my book, that's an accomplishment.

So, even though I won't be posting my little winner graphic on my blog this year and I won't have a certificate to hang up, I think that I have risen above quite a challenge during this round of National Novel Writing Month.  Next year, though, all of those words had better watch out.

Even though I know I didn't reach the goal, here's to hoping that my little comes up with 16,000 words by midnight.  If anyone can, she can.

-AA