My First NaNoWriMo Win!!!

***Sprinkles confetti, throws balloons, gulps some wine, screams, faints******

WHOOSH!!! It has been an eventful, stress-filled November. Had to juggle everything together to meet up with the deadline, yesterday. Let me share my experience from the last few days remaining to the deadline. By 28th November, i had written 44,038 words. Gosh, i was desperate. I had to attend to the ticket sale organisation at a comedy event ( The event management arm of the company i work for) on sunday, of all days. By monday, 29th, i was very busy and had to attend to office matters. During lunch break, i typed some more. That evening, i reached 45, 997 words, and suffering from sleep deprivation while wondering if the whole contest was worth it.

My brain went on strike as i dozed off. Got bitten by mosquitoes in the living room which woke me from my slumber and sent me to bed. By 30th, i stared at my screen. "Rachel, you can do it. Just relax. You'll type 50,000+ words and will be happy with yourself." i thought. Thankfully, i had attended to office matters early and finished by 12 pm (that's the great thing about being a manager) and began my typing. I typed and typed and typed (my colleagues were wondering what i was up to) and typed. By 6pm, when i had to go home, i had hit 50,083 words. I immediately copied and pasted, feeling my heart beat wildly and my fingers go numb. My server used that opportunity to be excruciatingly slow. The vehicle that was to pick me, was horning furiously, outside the building. "No, no, I rebuke you Satan. I will do this. This is my first contest and i need to create a great impression that i'm a winner, not a quitter", i thought again.

I clicked on the verify and win button but nothing. So, i shut down my system and went home. The next day, i realised i had made a slight error that could have costed me my winnings. Instead of copying and pasting into the Word Count page, i did so in the Novel Excerpt page. Realizing this, i quickly did it, while thanking God that it was still valid because of the different time zones. Ha! And alas, i became a winner.

Talk about endurance, perserverance and sleepless weekends! It's over...for now.