So, November is over and I can say I will be more prepared for it next year than I was this year. November is National Novel Writing Month and for the first time Cecilia and I decided to join the many Wrimos around the world and take the challenge.

We thought it would be a walk in the park considering we are used to spewing 5K shorts in a sitting. It turned out to be a heck of a lot complicated than we thought. Picking the story was only slightly tricky. We decided to take a step out of a comfort zone and tackle something new, so paranormal for Cecilia and Sci-Fi for me. Of course, considering our background we added some erotic scenes in it (what's time travel without a good sex scene?).

Cecilia as usual went on a research binge a week before the first day of November. She plotted, planned, organized, and tidied her story outline. She knew where she was going and how to get there. I, on the other hand, had absolutely no idea of where to start, what path to take or where it would lead me. In fact, I didn't have anything more than a slight idea of what my story would be.

It took me a day to get something resembling a plot going in my head, another day to start writing. By the time I typed my first line, Cecilia was already close to 5K into her story. We had a standing joke. She was the Energizer NaNoBunny while I was the Turtle. While she got 700 words in a thirty-minute sprint, I was lucky if I got 450. The explanation to such a big difference is that, because I didn't plan, plot, or research my story, I would stop ever so often to check my facts, research, learn new things.

Then a week into NaNoWriMo I was prodded to submit Countermeasure to a contest. That meant we had to put a big effort into finishing the first round of edits before the end of the month. Now...editing the shorts or a small book might have been easy but editing the 120K novel into submission was a little bit more than we thought was going to be.

To add to the lengthening list, we also took upon ourselves to write a novella for a submission call in January and also develop a contest, which will also take place in January. With that all piled up on our plate platter, we had days when we thought our sanity was going to seize to exist for good.

We stopped writing our NaNo project for six days and by day 26, when we finally finished our editing commitments, I was 16K behind while NaNoBunny was about 10K behind the target goal. At that point we (read I) worried we wouldn't finish it. As usual, Cecilia slapped me upside the head and, with a curt "we can do it", proceeded to plot the course to victory.

We shut the world out and dove into NaNoGoodness for three full days. My novel was finished at 50,080 words and Cecilia validated hers at 50,181 words but hers is still to be finished. We have decided to develop her story into a larger novel once we get some normalcy into our workdays (which might not happen soon).

Some may say that NaNoWriMo is not a valid effort because the end results are usually flawed, in need of a lot of work, fact checking, etc. but I have to say, I for one, learned a lot about myself as a writer. That alone was worth the effort. I learned about the writing community as a whole, I learned about the power of writing buddies (that one was already hinted by the fact Cecilia and I have written together for over a year now) and the power of persistence, of having a goal, of setting yourself to achieve what you want to achieve.

During the last month I made friends I hope to keep for a long time, I met people who are witty, funny, and just plain nice. All through the power of #NaNoWordSprints and the unity it brought to us all.

Was it a grueling month, a crazy month? Yes! No doubt about it. But I wouldn't have it any other way.

Sláinte!