Yes, boys and girls, I have today been certified a NaNoWriMo 2013 Winner, for having had my novel validated at 50,096 words.
Leaving aside simple issues such as whether I am actually more than half-way through the book as it will eventually turn out to be, it has been a weird experience, validating today.
Overnight, I needed only a further 809 words, which I duly wrote and more this morning. Wordcount on Open Office gave me a total of 50,226 so I went to validate. I copied and pasted the entire book so far, only to be told by NaNoWriMo that I was validated at 49,446 words. That’s a discrepancy of 780 words, and another 554 words still needed.
Fortunately, I was still in my equivalent of “The Zone”, so it was not too difficult a task to move on into the next chapter and write on, until Word Count confirmed I had another 600+ words (the whole document currenty stands at 50,854). When copied and pasted, this time I was validated, at the afore-mentioned 50,096 words. Go figure.
As a winner, I am now entitled to download my Winner’s Certificate, to go with the one from two years ago. Except that, where my name, the novel’s working title and my Final and Win Day tallies are not inserted, nor can I work out how to insert them as the site suggests I should. Is there anyone out there who’s done this bit of the process and can tell me what to do?
What matters most, however, is everything I’ve managed to write this month, whilst fitting in between shifts that are not at all convenient to this kind of thing. I no longer have NaNoWriMo to compel me, but I have sufficiently well-established myself in this story that I’m going to keep this rhythm going until the First Draft is complete (it could be still going on Xmas Day as far asI can tell at this point).
As there are those of you who seem interested, I will keep posting updates. I’ve a big revelation on the very near horizon, which I expect to get to sometime in the middle of next week. But the next one’s certainly going to be something a bit more ‘fantastic’ than this.
Martin Crookall - Author For Sale 
Congratulations on winning! It’s great that you like your story and are going to keep going with it.
Hi Alison, and congratulations in return. This is my second NaNoWriMo, and I never expected to complete the novel, it was a forcing tool to make myself get into this book I’d been struggling with for months. It wouldn’t have mattered if I’d fallen short of the line, as long as I got firmly into it.
I’m assuming you’re planning to finish up your novel as well?
Yes. I think so. I did the challenge to take a break from and gain some distance from a novel I’d been working on for 3 years. Now I’m ready to go back to that manuscript with fresh eyes, but I think a lot of what I wrote this month will be useable in some form of future project.
Hah! Exactly the opposite to me! I was determined to write this novel because it’s very much out of my usual style, and I was not prepatred to abandon it just because it was difficult. Of course, it may turn out to be crap, but after this it’s going away for at least threemonths, whilst i write something a bit more “typical”. I have two potential projects to go on to next, and haven’t really decided which as yet, after which I’ll look back to this novel.
Good luck with your long project, and I hope the exercise has worked for you in that respect as well.
Interesting. I definitely learned a lot of interesting new writing techniques through the challenge, so whether I pick the book back up or not, I’m excited about the experience as a whole.