BY BIANCA SPRIGGS
Lexington finished placing at #203 out of 484 participating regions with a total of 2,615,504 words during NaNoWriMo, beating out places like Egypt, part of New Jersey, Niagara Falls, Cornwall, Quebec, Notre Dame, and Miami! Although, Italy crept back up out of nowhere at the last moment and beat us by one #202. Ah, well. Next year, hope there are more of you all to take Italy on!
So, it turns out, 50K is just a pit stop. I’m still writing and it’s been four days since the challenge was over. I’m closer to 70K now, but with only a few more scenes left, it’s looking like I’ll top out around 75-80K. Which is about right for a YA novel. And of course, I’ve got ideas a-brewing for the third and fourth installation of this saga, so all in all I would say that November was a success.
Not that I ever really doubted I would finish, but it’s really something to see yourself go from shying away at even the prospect of plunking down material for a first draft after you’ve so carefully worked on your outline, characters, plot, etc. to stuffing that outline where the sun don’t shine and letting your fingers do the walking. It’s kind of a big deal. Because not only am I pleasantly surprised to see that I have finished, a great deal of what I’ve written is salvageable….meaning it’s gone from being a hunk a of clay down by the riverside to being a hunk of clay that kind of looks like the bust of a person in my studio. Now it’s about more molding for the rest of this month, adding scenes, and then going back with my fine utensils and sculpting. For as long as it takes.
I don’t want to jinx it, so I won’t say much more than that. For those of you who’ve kept up with my obsessive nature this month, I appreciate it! The general interest and support has been humbling, encouraging, and I’m very much looking forward to the big ‘unveil!’ For now, I’ll tell you this much. It’s a bildungsroman about a little brown girl who moves to Kentucky and discovers something extraordinary about herself thanks to the help of the locals. Sound familiar?
