word count wednesday - fifth and final

it is the morning of December 1st, and that means some of you may still be sleeping off your NaNoWriMo hangover.
some others of you may be pointing and laughing at the folks with the NaNo hangover, saying "see? glad i didn't do that this year."

as for me, i hit my 50K on Sunday.
finishing a few days early is like drinking a lot of water and taking advil before you go to bed. it helps prevent the hangover, so i'm feeling pretty good. ;)

my final word count in the NaNo validator was 50,950 !!!

since i had written nine chapters of this book prior to november and because i went on a writing spree monday on my day off to finish the whole darn thing, my total WC for the full manuscript is almost 72,000, including these two words: "THE END."

so yeah, of course i'm feeling all kinds of cheery about that, but here's what i really want to say:
whether you have 72,000 words or 7,200... YOU should be celebrating too!
i've mentioned before that BUTTER was a NaNo novel last year, and i didn't even get halfway to the goal before it got derailed. and as you know, that all worked out okay.

so if you didn't hit 50K, i hope you will continue to work on whatever projects you started in november. if you DID hit 50K, i hope you'll come back to your MS after a few days or weeks off and sit down to revise Revise REVISE. because as we writers all know, the first draft is just the beginning.
we also know that november may be a whole lot of fun, but writing is a year-round job and a lifelong passion.

take that momentum from NaNo and use it to propel you into the new year. however many words you wrote... you are that many words closer to making a dream come true. keep the momentum going!

best of luck. you are ALL AWESOME, regardless of word count.