It’s officially December, which makes most people think of the upcoming holidays, but for me, it marked the end of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo.

Every November, writers around the world sit down at their computers or with a notebook and a pen to hopefully complete a 50,000 word draft of the novel they’ve always dreamed of writing in 30 days.  This year, one of those people was me.

This was my first year participating, and I had a lot of fun doing it. I had a bit of a plan, but not much. I knew what the main events of the plot  were going to be, and where I wanted to end up, but everything in between I made up as I went along. I thought that I would be staring at the screen at some point trying to think of what to write because I got stuck. It never came to that, but it nearly happened a few times. I decided that because it was my first year, I could surprise my friends and family by not telling them what I was doing until after the month was over, and I emerged victorious. I only told one of my friends and my cousin what I was doing, but my parents found out some of it. I think they were suspicious for a while, because I was constantly typing on my computer, and it didn’t look like homework.

I found out about NaNoWriMo from a YouTube video from one of the people I subscribe to. At first, I didn’t know what it was, so I clicked on the link in the description and it took me to the NaNoWriMo website. I found out about it on November first, which was the day it started, so I figured that I would have to wait until next year because I wasn’t prepared for it.

Then I changed my mind and decided to do it, but by then it was November 3, and I was over three thousand words behind. I didn’t know what I was going to write about, because I’ve had so many ideas over the years and I’ve always had trouble picking which one to write about. I ended up picking one of the recent ideas that I was in the process of writing down for future use, which was partly inspired by another  Youtube video I had watched a few days before.

In order to complete 50,000 words in 30 days, I would’ve had to average 1,666 words per day, but my goal was 2,000 because I started late, and had to catch up. The first few days were disappointing, because I didn’t meet that goal, but as more days passed I got better at reaching it. There were some days that were difficult for me because I had to work after school, and then do homework and then work on my story. On those days, I forced myself to write at least 1,000 so I wouldn’t fall too far behind. I met or exceeded my goal of 2,000 words per day 16 days out of the 28 that I participated. It was amazing to watch my word count go up and up each day, growing closer to the ultimate goal, despite the challenges. I had always wanted to write a novel, but I’ve never been able to because all of the ones I had previously tried to write ended up flopping after the first 15 pages, and I abandoned them. I chose to participate because the deadline would encourage me to write, because I hadn’t written since the last day of summer vacation, and it would give me an incentive to write a complete draft, something I had never been able to do. It was hard sometimes to find time to write, but I wrote every single day that I participated, whereas before I hadn’t written a single word in months, and even before that I wasn’t writing much either.

Even though it was difficult and the most ambitious project I’ve attempted so far, I had a lot of fun participating. I’m happy to say that I ended up “winning”, with a total word count of 50,193. Winning simply means that the writer was able to complete 50,000 words during the allotted time, and the only prize is the satisfaction of completing the task.

Though I completed the required amount of words to win, my novel is not complete yet. I estimate that I will need at least another five thousand words to finish completely, and maybe even more. Even though I haven’t actually reached my goal of finishing my novel yet, I’m proud of myself for accomplishing this goal.

I will definitely be participating again next year, and I would encourage anyone who has ever dreamed of writing but has always put it off for doubt or lack of time, or those that like me had written before, but have been unable to finish. It takes a lot of effort and commitment, but at the end of the month, seeing those 50,000 words on the page is worth it for anyone who has dreams of writing.