50,036

It’s November 30th and the last day of the National Novel Writing Month challenge – where writers compete against themselves to write 50,000 words in thirty day. I have done it every year since 2013, but last year, for various reasons, I gave up after only a week. It was the time of my writing block, if you want to call it that, more of a stumbling block maybe, but I knew I couldn’t rise to the challenge, so bowed out. I really didn’t think I would make it this time, but somehow I managed to keep to a steady pace and it’s only over the last couple of days I’ve had to push up the word count and thank goodness I finished well in time!

Why do I do it, why do I take a challenge which needs such commitment – I guess because I need a push sometimes, it’s actually quite fun, and I end up with more words than I would normally have in a month. The only disappointment is that the site has been updated, and to be honest it was a bit creaky, but it has lost a lot of the friendliness that I found in previous years, or maybe I didn’t manage to find the right gang of writing chums.

Here are my results from the past eight years – 2014 was a brilliant year, I set myself some extra challenges and met them all:

• Unknown Destination – mystery, 50,036, Nov. 2020
• Who Do You Think I Am – mystery/genealogical mystery, 10,179, Nov. 2019
• Winterdyke* – thriller/suspense, 62,015 Nov. 2018
• Milla – mainstream, 50,470 Nov. 2017
• And The River – mainstream, 51,282 Nov. 2016
• Earthquake* – mystery, 53,030, Nov. 2015
• Raddy and Syl* – genealogical mystery, 50,092,  Nov. 2014
• Magick and the Photo Box* – mainstream, 50,071, Jul. 2014
• Cooking the Books – genealogical mystery, 50,125, Apr. 2014
• Radwinter* – genealogical mystery, 73,026, Nov 2013

Wow! That adds up to 500,326 words!!! Of those, the ones I have asterisked above have become actual books which you can find on Amazon (Magick and the Photo Box became just Magick)