30 Days of Thanks: Day 31

I got pretty slack there at the end with my 30 days of thanks. Sorry about that. It's not that I wasn't thankful, I was just tied up with NaNoWriMo and taking the time to enjoy our trip away to the NC mountains for Thanksgiving. It was a lovely trip and unfortunately, I came back woefully behind in my word count. It took some serious buckling down to complete it before yesterday's deadline, but I did it.

That's right. In 30 days, I wrote 50,860 words that included a beginning, a middle and an end. I can now claim for all eternity that I wrote a book. WHAT?! Seriously, this still amazes me. Okay, it's got some serious flaws, needs some major continuity help, and I already want to cut a whole character's point of view and develop another character more fully, but those are all things I didn't have 31 days ago.

I learned a lot about my own process during this experiment and how I work best. More importantly, I learned that inspiration is a fickle mistress, but most of the time all you have to do is sit down and start. I battled my fears and proved that yes, I can do it. It's not impossible. And despite all its problems, there are parts of this book I wrote that are darn good. All in all, it was quite the rewarding experience.

That being said, today I am supremely thankful for my family and friends. I made my journey public to my family and was quite vocal about it on Facebook as well as in this space. I can't tell you how the words of encouragement and questions throughout the month of November helped me. Having a personal cheering section made all the difference. So to all of you out there who offered a virtual high five when I was feeling successful, who offered a word of encouragement when I wasn't, asked me how it was going when we ran into each other and who helped me celebrate my victory last night and today now that it's complete - THANK YOU!

So, what's next? Christmas. Catching up on a month's worth of DVR programs. Sleep.

Then, come January, I'll print this sucker out and read it to see what I've truly got. Then the real work begins. After all, it takes most writers years to write a book, not a month. Thanks to the experience and all of the fantastic people in my life, I'm confident that I can handle it.