Don's Basement: Words count. Especially 50,000 of them.

I wrote 53,842 words as part of National Novel Writing Month.
But who's counting? Me and frequently.

I enjoyed the writer's life and remembered the years in my 20s and 30s when I believed that I would make a living as a writer. Of course, it was much easier at that time because I smoked cigarettes. That makes writing much easier although it makes your insurance premiums higher and there are apparently health risks.

(these guys got to smoke, big advantage)

It is not coincidental that my 17 year old main character (or mc as we call him on the ChiWriMo facebook page) smokes cigarettes and has an Ace of Spades Zippo lighter.

The reward for all that writing became the word count. To write 50,000 words in 30 requires writing 1,667 words a day. Putting this in perspective, last Tuesday column (11/29/11) by Thomas Friedman in the New York Times is 891 words. In terms of bulk then, it is writing 2 Thomas Friedman columns a day and unlike Thomas Friedman you have to make everything up. (There may be room for debate on whether TF is making things up but that is another blog post for another blogger)

Don't know if TF is a smoker

The NaNoWriMo site has an excellent stats tab that show daily progress in a graph form as well as an estimated completion date based on a running average of your production.

Now that I have typed all these words, I have to decide what happens next. Do I edit what I've written? Turn it into a screenplay? Create a puppet show?

Time will tell. As it stands now, I am only happy with one line in the book.

Doris is the mc's aunt (by marriage, not blood).

Not that my own family showed a lot of affection but the only thing Doris could nurse was a hangover.

My wife had an aunt Doris but she was very nice and not at all like the character in the book.

By the way, I am winner of the 2011 NaNoWriMo.