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The stamp of approval

As some of you may remember, I have for the last month been participating in  the National Novel Writing Month challenge, a fiction-writing marathon of 30 days and 50,000 words.

Consequently, November seemed much shorter this year. Towards the end of it, I began to think it was too short. Thirty days? Really? Seemed a bit stingy to me, what with more than 14,000 words still to write, and two days left to do it in. Somehow, though, those words really did get written, and not simply by copying large sections of the dictionary. The words were relevant to the story (the vast majority of them, at least), they formed meaningful sentences (for those with a generous imagination), and toward the end, they managed to pick up the various threads of the story, wind it down, and help it reach a satisfying conclusion (the conclusion being that I had passed the 50,000 words-mark). The Beast of Ravensburg was a novel, a medieval tale of bloody deeds and dark secrets.

I’m a little bit proud of myself, but with great pride comes great responsibility, to paraphrase Spiderman’s uncle. I now know that I can write 7,000 words in a day, and have a draft of a novel ready in a month. Conclusions may be drawn from this.

But, for the next few days, at least, I’m going to relax, and tell myself, Well done!