NaNo Madness: I did it!

I am sure my neighbours must have been a tad bit irritated as I blared out the horns and turned on the music yesterday. My husband had mixed my favourite drink – Pinnacolada (without alcohol, it just does not taste the same!) – He said I was already in delirium and refused to add a bit of vodka to it. I had done it. I have cracked the NaNoWriMo. As I typed in around 50100 words and had it validated too , I went around the house dancing with joy. I felt a bit like Archimedes when he shouted ‘Eureka! Eureka!’ from his bathtub. Yes, I had done it! It feels so nice when you achieve something. The feeling is incomparable when you know that you get nothing in return but just the joy of completing a first draft. However, this time, without the knowledge of NaNoWriMo organisers, I snuck something more away from the programme too –

• I made so many writing buddies that I never even knew existed before the 1st of November 2013. And these great folks pushed me, prodded me and poked me to write like I have never written before. These selfless souls sacrificed so much time making sure that I wrote without browsing (the Facebook NaNoWriMo Page was exempted) and sat up in the night sprinting with me. Thank you, folks. I couldn’t have done it without you!

• I was this lazy writer who wrote as and when the muse struck her. I know that is not the way for a writer to work but I was too lazy to care. NaNoWriMo, you taught me to just sit and write whatever I wanted and permitted me to write even when my characters have no names, when there is no research done, when I have no timeline and without any punctuations too. (I put in the fullstops or even I wouldn’t be able to read it again.)

• I have never ever written more than 2000 words on any day. I broke all record today (the 30th of November) when I wrote 12000 words in a single day. It was exhausting, my finger swelled a bit but I survived. I realized if I learnt to type and did these things more often, my hand might actually get used to this.

• And most important of all, it was the first time I had typed out a first draft. Till date, I had always written my first draft by longhand. This was the first time I had done this and I was not too disappointed with the result. I might do it again!

NaNo does not promise any rewards at the end but there is a lot of joy and happiness waiting for you at the end. And most important of all, you realize you can put up your collar and call yourself a writer!