November is over.  NaNoWriMo has officially ended.  Whew!  I finished just over 52,000 words for the month.  I didn’t finish my novel, but I never expected to finish it—speculative fiction novels are generally longer than 50K words—but I’m happy with the progress I made, and I think the novel is a good place. 

Finishing this year has been particularly satisfying, because at the beginning of the month, I didn’t expect I would finish NaNoWriMo at all.  I know my novel-writing progress will slow considerably from here.  I have about a half-dozen short stories that I want to finish and submit, as well as that previous novel that needs revision.  I plan to keep working on this draft, however, chipping away at it a few hundred words a day.  At that pace, I would be targeting a February finish date.

Here’s my final NaNoWriMo tally sheet:

Nov 22—2,191 words
Nov 23—1,463 words
Nov 24—1,567 words
Nov 25—1,962 words
Nov 26—2,304 words
Nov 27—1,607 words (hit 50K words today!)
Nov 28—806 words
Nov 29—0 words
Nov 30—1,109 words
Week 4 (+2 days)—13,009 words
Final Total—52,019 words

Whether you met the 50,000-word goal or not, congratulations to everyone who took up the NaNoWriMo challenge this year.  To me, NaNoWriMo isn’t all about finishing.  It’s about writing and believing you can tell a story.  So if you wrote during November and intend to keep writing in December, January, February… you’ve succeeded.