“Victory belongs to the most persevering.” — Napoleon Bonaparte

Word counts are due to the NaNo site tonight by 11:59 PM. Do yourself a favor and get them posted early because the site will start seeing some heavy traffic.

We’re here. 30 days and however many words you’ve written, if you’re still here and pounding the keyboards, you’re still doing good. Make no mistake; 50,000 words in 30 days is a long road, and while this year marks my third failure to hit that mark in the nine years I’ve been doing NaNo, I still think it’s terribly worthwhile because the point is doing the thing, to take time during the middle of the madness of November to make time for your writing.

In some ways, I still count myself a winner. I didn’t take the easy road this year, which would have been to simply ignore the whole thing, curl up on the couch and just let another month of not writing slip by. I tried my best to make the time for the writing and discovered that there are things I need to change, patterns that have been slipped into that actively work against my having that time. Some of them are outside expectations that have cropped up, some of them are habits I’ve slipped into and need to change. It is only due to the stress and heat of the moment that comes with NaNo that exposed these things. As I wrote on Saturday, I may have decided not to pursue the 50,000 word goal, but the writing continues and the work continues. Part of that work is putting into motion the lessons I’ve learned these past 30 days.

So, a question for anyone who’s reading this: what have you learned from doing NaNo this year?