2018 nanowrimo reflections of a creative challenge: Lovejoy

This 2018 season of National Novel Writing Month, or nanowrimo, was very different from the last four creative challenges, at least for me. The biggest difference, I suppose is that I worked very quickly on the last few challenges. November 2017's The Second Door took 13 days. April 2018's Admiral fish and the Rainy Day Parade took 21 days. July 2018's The Chill of the Morning took 15 days and that photobook, Blue Red Gray took 8 days. I work fast.



This November that was not the case. This last November I worked on my story everyday, all thirty days of November. I did not finish the story until the very last day. I averaged just under 2000 words a day, everyday, all month.



Now, as I think about it, this is the proposed process: write everyday all month. It was not a difficult thing to do, far from it, but admitted by day 10, I was worried that I would not finish, or at the very least, not finish on time.



It's not like it is life or death to finish the novel by November 30. There is nobody out there going to fine me, imprison me, or hold a gun to my head to assure the project gets done on time. If I was worried on day ten if I'd be able to finish, I was feeling there was a level of danger on day 20. On Day 20 I knew it wasn't going to get done.



Three days later, I knew the end, and it was only a matter of getting there.



It was nearing noon on November 30^th when I made the final keystrokes. Lovejoy was finished. It finished at just under 59,000 words, or about 9,000 words more that the proposed 1,667 words a day for a 50,000 word novel.