the taste of victory is sweet indeed

Well, it nearly killed me, but...

I reached nanowrimo.org victory!!!!

I am much more relaxed now.

...

The "prize" given by the official web site for reaching the 50,000 word mark is an icon.

It's a JPG file which you are free to copy to your own web site.

Last year, Trescott told me that after finishing nanowrimo, he embedded the JPG into his home page. I burst out laughing. "It's just an icon!" I said.

Turns out it's different when you yourself do the contest. After you sacrifice a month of evenings to your novel, forsaking the warmth of in-person human interaction as you sit in front of your laptop night after night, despairing as you hit the wall at 30,000 words and then slogging on from peer pressure and sheer force of will, finally approaching the finish line and realizing you created a novel you're not entirely ashamed of (just mostly ashamed), turns out you feel differently about that icon.

I spent many tense minutes tonight scouring the nanowrimo site for the method on officially validating word count, so that I could download the icon. I pored through the FAQs. I looked through every option on their pages. I scanned the header and footer of each page. Finally I found a reference on one page that made me realize the button was not appearing because I set the time zone incorrectly. Then I immediately corrected that nonsense.

What I'm saying is ... lo and behold ...



And here's a bigger one!



...

Some people have written me to ask for an excerpt. I was initially hesitant, because the novel is unedited and in its raw (hence crappy) form. But people said I should show an excerpt anyway.

Here is an actual real-life excerpt from my novel:

"... the ... "

Have a good night. I love all you guys.