I made the shot and I missed

Nanowrimo 2016.

Well, that was a trip.

Here is my chart for 2016. I missed the midnight cut off by 421 words.

421 words.

Actually, it’s closer than that; when I tried to enter an update I was up to 49,696 or 324 words off finishing.

Sighs heavily.

It’s my own fault. I spent the first week paralysed by shock and horror at the trumperdink vote. I was unable to write a love story under those circumstances.

I left it all to the last minute, as I often do, in my life. So on the last two days, I powered up. Twenty minute Pomodoro’s, too much coffee - just get the words down. I was punching out two thousand words an hour.

And then I got some other curve-balls. Days wiped out through no fault of mine. A power outage at a friend of kid 2’s who then asked if he could hold the party he had all planned at my house. I said yes. He needed a hand in the kitchen and my desk is in the corner of the living room, so I didn’t get a lot of words written.

Kid extra brought a friend home because of train cancellations. All disruptive.

[After the party I was cleaning up. I looked at my step counter and said ‘what time is it? I have 280 steps to go’ as it clicked over to midnight and wiped out a 300 day run of goals. Kid 2 looked at my face, said, ‘I love you, mum’ and RAN.]

In the last two days, even with all of that on, I started at 36,455 and wrote nearly 14 thousand words. The nano site is often glitchy when it comes to geography. It kept saying I still had two days to go when it hit midnight and froze me out. I could have lied, but I don't do that, either.

I made the shot and I missed.

But you know… all I had to do was write an extra 14 words on each day.

That’s all. I could have done that amount on any day.

And what I have now is a jumbled mass of words. It’s rougher than most of my rough first drafts, but it’s fifty thousand words. I got some blinding insights for some characters back stories. I sorted out my themes and my story arcs. I got some ideas for the next story in what is becoming a series.

But man, am I pissed about those step goals.