Friday, November 30, 2007

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.

14 comments:

Unknown said...

Congratulations! I honestly would be interested in reading your novel.

Anonymous said...

Congrats! Way to go...

I couldn't complete this year too :(

Strider Aragorn said...

Congratulations. I hope you're lucky enough to get published.

Random Stuff said...

Congratulations! As a fellow Nanowrimo'er I can appreciate the dedication it takes to actually finish one of these. Best of luck with the rest of what will undoubtedly be an auspicious writing career. ;)

Anonymous said...

Niniane,

When you are big..

will you rememeber us little people?

Anonymous.. people?

Thorne said...

Congratulations!

Unknown said...

congrats, we love u 2, u really should buy us some beer as celebration~ :)

Anonymous said...

Congratulations, Niniane. More than I could manage--I always dreaded essay tests, as the right words never seemed to come quickly enough. Nice job.

Anonymous said...

Your book is called - "Murder in the Penthouse"? How innovative?
Honestly, judging by your blog writing, I didn't think you were capable of writing murder mysteries ;)

http://tinyurl.com/2ypkx5 - Is this the one?

sunny @ taryn's design diary said...

It took James Joyce 15 years to write Finnegan's Wake and these people wrote a novel in.. what is it, a month? Goodness.

Re: "I'll bet her novel bashes Asian men and kissing up to WM."

I see you have fans here, too, just like we do over at 8A. ;-D

Let me know if you're interested in contributing to Kartika Review. Our inaugural issue is filled, but we haven't put out the issue yet because all of the editors' hands are currently tied =(

- Akrypti

Anonymous said...

Yes, we are big fans of Niniane's AM bashing and WM ass kissing.

Anonymous said...

I'd read it but to be honest, almost all Asian American books I've read were horrible.

Bad news: I'm jaded at touching another Asian American book.

Good news: You don't have to be great to be much better than what's out there.

Anonymous said...

Are you really the very first person to reach 50000 words? Or they give out prizes for the first n persons that complete the deed?

Tiffany said...

I, too, wrote one of the crappiest collections of 50,000+ words for this thing. And damned if I didn't print out the WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER certificate and hang it on my wall at work. Everyone asks about it, and I tell them it's a steaming pile of crap, but it's 50,000 words of crap. They then shake their heads and walk away.