NaNoWriMo: Year Two. Done and Done.

At 12:42 AM PST, I put the first draft of my most recent novel, The Inventory, into the magical NANOWRIMO validating window (by this process they ensure that you have hit your word count, and while they do not claim that it is 'magical', I feel it kind of is, since the box can hold 50K words of text and tabulate them in all of 10 seconds before granting you a wonderful sense of accomplishment). At this point, Microsoft Word had told me I had finished my first draft at 50,122; Nano's site said I was at 49,824--or 176 words short. While 176 words may sound like nothing, especially compared against 50K, it's a big deal when you're tired and you just patted yourself on the back for a job well done.



At 12:45 I took a deep breath and went to work putting meat on some bare-bones descriptions in order to make up the difference.

I submitted to the "magical" portal of validation again at 1:20 AM, having added a few asides and "sensory passages" to the draft's prologue and much of the first chapter.

This (among other little badges) is what I received after the program ran its count:

So, there you have it.

Final Count for Draft 1 of The Inventory, completed November 29, 2013 at 1:20 AM PST

MICROSOFT WORD: 50,388

NANOWRIMO Proprietary Validation: 50,089

Words Remaining: 0

Thanks all for the support. I'm going to let this draft sit on the back burner for 60 days while I spend December catching up on reading and January assessing my writing goals for 2014. In February, I'll give The Inventory it's first read, and...oh boy...we'll see where we go from there.

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and a great weekend to come!
C