NaNoWriMo 2010, Day 30/30

It looks like my word count for November will be around 20,000 words. In that respect, I "lost" NaNoWriMo. I could think about that.

Or I could think about how I'm 80 pages further along in my novel. That a whole big swath of story that didn't exist before this month is now on paper. That I've made new personal discoveries about the craft of writing, and begun to apply them to my work. That I've maintained a working writing routine for two months. That I've drunk a whooooole lot of coffee.

Instead, I plan to think about next month. My goal is a very simple 30,000 words. An improvement on this month, but a reasonable one around the holidays. The minute I hit that 30,000 mark, I'll be ordering Dr. No on Blu-Ray. And for a bonus, if I manage to exceed my goal by 10k, I'll throw in a P.G. Wodehouse book. (How about a book for each 10k I go over?)

The bribes will be fun, but they're not the reason I write. I've got 167k words that prove that. I write because I love it, and that's why I get up at 5am even when it sucks.