This morning at 6h45 while waiting the bus

Just sharing a bit of snow with you! I think this one is there to stay and won't melt until spring.

NaNo 2011 - Thanks God It's Over !

It started my fifth NaNoWriMo this year and I was trilled to began but I am relieved that it's finally over!
I am very happy to say that I did a bit more than 100K words within the 30 day challenge and even if I had the same goal as last year, I found this year tougher than ever.
It was more difficult because I had more responsibilities outside the nano challenge. More job, more involvement , more everything. Finding time was difficult and implied a lot of understanding from the people around me. Thanks to all! This success is because of you too!
Of course there was a large number of events that helped and hindered me through the month but here are the major ones:

• The best move: having a few days out of office and dedicated to writing. Those days were the most productive and helped me to cover for the days I could not write enough and of course end more quickly.
• The wrong move: thinking I could write on a business trip. So wrong. I was so exhausted with the travel, bad eating and not enough (good) tea! That's were I got late.
• The coolest moment: writing sprints with other wrimos. A very effective way to write. I'll have a post on this soon since it's a direct link with Agile.
• The difficult time: of course week two was awful but not as difficult as going over 50K. It was hard to continue knowing I had achieved the primary goal.

Did I finish a novel? Of course! Actually, this was a very strange, sad and even frustrating moment. I ended "The Two of I" at 88K on Saturday, November 26th at 8:30 in the morning. It just ended there. At first, I was happy to have ended such a nice novel. I know it's still a draft with a lot of mistakes and crappy scenes, but it has potential and it will become a novel in time. Then I was sad. It was the end of a story and it was like a movie I really like, is ended and was left on my appetite and wanted to have a few minutes more. That's when frustration came.
Why does it end now? I still have 12K to do! How I am going to write those 12K words now?
I was angry then and almost panicked. I was searching my brain to have another novel idea. I used a few plot bunnies I had but never really explored them and finally got to start the sequel of "Débordement Imaginaire" than I am currently editing. It's a bad idea from my point of view to start the sequel of a story that will change, but it was the easiest story I could find. Also, 12K is not the whole story. I just picked up the good scenes I had in my mind. I'll use them when it will be time to really write the sequel.
And now what's next?

• Back on editing Débordement Imaginaire
• Back on reading books and blogs
• Back on blogging here too!

See you during December with tea tastings, Agile post, Aikido moment and of course, writing adventures!