Whew!

I did it!  I signed up for the National Novel Writing Month experience and I actually completed a novel.  My final word count was 51,945, and I had three days to spare.  It was a wonderful month for me and I'm glad I participated.  I must confess, however, that I don't think I'll do it again.  It was a lot of work.

One of the great things about it was that I wrote a novel I've been wanting to do for about a year.  I had this idea and have been rolling it around in my mind for awhile thinking about it and going over directions I wanted to take with it.  I've been busy with getting my cozy mystery published, rewrites on my women's fiction novel, and starting the second cozy, so this little novel kept getting pushed to the back burner.

NaNoWriMo was an opportunity for me to get that story out of my head and my heart and onto the page.  It was an amazing experience!  I learned a lot, about writing and about myself.

One of the things I learned was that when you have a firm deadline like this, you can get it done.  It is certainly not publishable as it is, and I will take next year to work on it so that I can get it out there.  But still, it was written.  And I'm happy, with the book and myself.  A nice feeling.

I will be putting the book on Smashwords for the next month.  It is a Christmas story, and I am going to be selling it for 99 cents, the proceeds of which will go to the NaNoWriMo Young Writers fund.  It will not be available after January 5th.  So if you're interested in reading it, in a very rough form, please feel free to go check it out at http://www.smashwords.com/ beginning December 1st.

The title of this book is THE CHRISTMAS TO REMEMBER.  If you do read it please overlook the fact that it needs a lot of work, and try to enjoy the story.  And know that you're helping young writers get started with the joy of the written word!