VIN WINS THE NANO

Yesterday night I crossed the 50,000-words mark which officially makes me a winner in the National Novel Writing Month thing. However, I am yet to finish the story but I still have another week to do it. It was an incredible experience writing the novel that was lurking in my mind for the better part of a decade. At last I’ve got it down somewhere! Right now I feel a considerable lightness of the mental kind. It wasn’t fun writing it though. I had a hard time herding the multitude of ideas screaming to be let out. More difficult was the actual writing hammering out at least two thousand words a day. But it had its own moments of fun. At a few places, here and there I was surprised at some of the lines that came spontaneously.

I suggest that entering into such a contest should be mandatory for all writers. It reveals a lot about the self. You will know your limits and how far you can stretch them. Yesterday morning I had thought of writing 5000 words in a single day. My previous high was 4500 words in a day that I wrote sometime last week and I thought it would be easy. It wasn’t easy though but it wasn’t impossible. When I crossed the 5000 words mark I felt pleased with my own determination which is non-existent on most days. A little bit of my self-confidence has grown and I hope to do the rewriting, revising on the book in the coming days.

The surprising part was that I decided to write this novel though I was at work on my first book which I had begun two years back. I was working on it on and off but sometime during June of this year I decided that I must finish the book this year come what may. I will be turning forty five next Feb and I wanted to finish a book at any cost. With the NaNo book I now have two books under my belt. That feels great.

The books I have written may not get published and right now I am not even thinking of sending them to publishers. They need a lot of work and that would keep me busy for another year at least. This will be a great learning experience and I hope to learn many new things about writing, myself and life while rewriting and revising my books. In future posts I will write more about my books. For now, that is all I have to say