So long, November: it's been real...

I can't even believe how long November felt, how much happened, how much distance I traveled since the very first day. And now it's December, what the heck.

Everything's the same. Everything has changed.

Some stats, please, with your indulgence, on the mighty month of November:

- 50,041 words written for National Novel Writing Month, completed on November 29th, one day ahead of schedule, yay! Which really adds up to:

- 1 book written, 1st ever! December will be heavy editing month, but still I'm sitting here pretty pleased as punch.

- 22 blog posts written toward National Blog Posting Month, sometimes re-purposing some of the 50K words above, other times words on top of that day's 1,700, phew! And yeah, on Day 22, I bailed on the blogging every day, realizing that I needed to put my eggs in the Novel basket. Because I remembered that essential thing which I tend to forget over and over and over:

Oh right, I can't do it all.

I'm not going to lie: November was tough. NaNoWriMo was great, but it was harder than childbirth, seriously. The daily commitment to produce a minimum of 1,700 words is no joke. Developing that habit took a lot of concerted effort, a lot of guts, not so much glory!

But now that I know that with a minimal re-arrangement of my priorities and schedule, that I CAN actually pull this off, create the time and space in which to produce at this level, well, that knowledge is a little dangerous, you see. I may just keep going, scaling back the goal to a more manageable 1,000 words/day, just to keep the muscles toned, maintain this delightful practice.

Stay tuned! I have so much new material to share, and some (big) ideas that I can't wait to unveil.

Thanks for all of the cheerleading and love from the sidelines. You're the BEST!

XX