25,174 words, and November 28th is coming to an end.

That is not so great on the word count for NaNoWriMo this time around, given that the goal is 50,000 by end of November. But I consider it a success. This story is a murder mystery with a lot of interesting and moving parts. My word-count progress stalled on November 20th. That’s when the characters and the plot took enough life for me to know that I needed to spend some new quality time researching and plotting. Plowing ahead at that point was going to create a painfully huge rewrite task. I was not ready for the efficient pace of over 2,000 words per day, which was what was needed at the time to reach 50k by end of November. So no winner badge for me this year. But a great start on a new novel, with characters developing on their own, is reward enough.

For those of you still in the throes of hitting the 50k, you are almost there. Keep going. Breathe later.

For those of you that found your target but had to veer off like me, you are winners, too. Of my two published books that started with NaNoWriMo, one hit the 50k during the one-month challenge, one did not. It’s the story that counts. Bring it to life. Do what you need to do to make it so. When you’re ready again with whatever pieces you need to put into place, move ahead again at an efficient pace. Write with abandon. Edit with care.