National Novel Writing Month is officially over and for the first time I failed to make the target word count of 50,000 words by November 30th.  I came up a few hundred words short (534 to be exact), but just couldn’t eek out the last ones in the wee hours last night.  To be honest, I’d rather come up a little short than waste my time just putting useless words on the page.

Even though I failed to hit my 50K target, I did actually complete both of my personal goals for this year’s  NaNoWriMo.  First, I wrote almost every day.  I started slow, but made up the words over the course of the month and wrote steadily for nearly every day (I wrote at least some words on 28 of the 30 days).  I even managed to hit my target word count (1,700 words) on most days, so all in all, a successful month.  Second, I finished the first draft of novella #2 in my novella trilogy, tentatively called the “Calypso Tryptych.”   I finished with time and words to spare, so I started writing a short story to get me to the NaNoWriMo word target, but that story eventually withered on the vine, leaving me short at the buzzer.  It was a valiant effort, but it simply wasn’t meant to be this year, and I’m not going to beat myself up over it.

Even in failure, I am actually a winner.  It’s not often I can say that.