NaNoWriMo :: NaNoWriMo Blog

This is my third NaNoWriMo and my second winning year. I failed miserably the first year through lack of self-belief. The second year I battled on and won against all the odds, fitting it in around life etc. And this year, I almost gave up half way through. It's been a difficult year. The only way I was able to guarantee to achieve the 50k goal was to write a regular amount every day, and for one reason or another, I started to fall behind. Events in my personal life started to take over, making it impossible to write my daily target. And I started to fail.
For me, it was those emailed pep-talks that constantly pulled me through - the feeling of being a part of a huge writing community, everyone sacrificing time and effort to reach the elusive 50k. So I pulled myself together and wrote harder, wrote more, increased my daily goal, enforced a writing regime where the writing was as important as everything else .. and I did it! I achieved my 50k EARLY!
One other, very special reason for wanting to be a winner again this year, is that my daughter was doing NaNoWriMo too . She had been the person responsible for my NaNo inititation - and this year we were writing together - almost neck and neck all the way, and we would each will the other on to win.

We were both NaNoWriMo 2008 winners through sheer determination.! Yay!!