Today’s word count: 1,422
Total word count: 57,261
Daily average: 2,489
And that’s a wrap. The story is done, at least in draft form. A little over 57,000 words, which is about 3,000 higher than my initial estimate, but well within the range of Otherworld novels. It’s also less than half of my all-time top Nanowrimo output, but we don’t talk about 2017 around here.
Going in, I thought this would be the hardest one yet, but it really wasn’t. I assumed a full-time job would make it harder to write, or at least leave me with too little free time to get much done. As it turns out, work never became a problem. I’ve been writing in the evenings (except on weekends), and I kept up a pretty good average despite the time constraints.
This is my 10th straight Nanowrimo success, and I’ve spent a lot of time this month wondering if it would be my last. At this moment, I can’t say for sure. I want to go out on top, finish my “career” with a resounding success. My mental state is declining so fast that I don’t know if I’ll even want to write next November. And I’m just going to put this out there right now: I honestly don’t expect to be alive for Nanowrimo 2023.
But that’s for another day. This evening, I can celebrate a job well done, a bit of light in a life otherwise dark. Every book is an accomplishment. Every completed story is its own achievement. For most of this year, I wondered if I would ever feel that sense of victory again, the sense that I reached a goal most only strive for.
I made it. If this is the end of my Nanowrimo journey, it’s an end worth writing about.