The End

Two little words I thought I would never reach but now, thanks to NaNoWriMo, I have.

I reached the 50000 word mark on 24 November but had nowhere near reached the end of the story. Somewhat naively, I had fully expected word 49999 to be ‘the’ and word 50000 to be ‘end’. I was at least building up to the final climax but I wasn’t there yet and so finishing the actual story, as opposed to reaching a specified word count, became my new target.

This was trickier and to be honest I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it. But then, nearly 18000 words later, I finally validated my *entire novel* at 11.20 pm on Friday 30 November.

I know that it is nowhere near ‘finished’ (for a start, there are plot holes in there that you could drive a truck through) but it’s a first draft and that’s more than I’ve ever had before. I’ve earmarked January as my editing / rewriting month but, for now, I just want to try and put the novel to sleep for the Christmas period (which seems to be easier said than done – my mind is itching to start editing *right now*) and forget about it for a while.

And, y’know, I fully intend to bask in the totally-amazing-feeling-of-actually-having-finished-something for as long as I possibly can 🙂 :-).