NaNoWriMo...Do you dare?

That's right. I am a 2010 NaNoWriMo Winner and I have the totally awesome badge (and key chain) to prove it.

Am I going to do it again? No. But that is because I am revising a work in progress and am making a push to finish and get it in the hands of an editor by the first of January. I don't want to lose the momentum.


But I am very sad about it. NaNoWriMo was a huge, like mega huge, accomplishment for me. By this time last year I had never taken on a task as big as writing 50,000 words in one month and I had no idea the discipline it would take. I was frustrated, stressed, mentally exhausted and  a social pariah.  It was awesome.

If you've never  participated you should, at least once. Being a writer requires hours upon hours of solitude. But for the month of November I was part of a group, a member of the community, one of the cool kids. The community may be filled with maniac writers staggering around in a WriMo daze but it was my group of maniacs and we were in it together.

The best piece of advice I can give a future WriMo is...do not under estimate how many hours you will need to set aside to accomplish this task. It goes by quicker than you think.

If you want to read an in depth article about my experience see my interview about it  at The Capable Garnet. It was done a week after NaNoWriMo so all the feelings were fresh.