NaNoWriMo

Well, I did it.

Last night at 10:00pm, I logged into a chat room.  For two hours, about 40 other Nanowrimo writers and myself chattered on and on about ridiculous nonsense, while worrying about the remaining time left until midnight, when November 1st and National Novel Writing Month (nanowrimo) would officially begin.  "Oh no! There's only 46.72 minutes left until the clock turns to midnight!"  We updated each other way too often about the time, and had a large amount of fun giving ideas for character names, learning where we were from (all of them in this chat room were from the odd parts of PA that do no belong to Philly or Pittsburgh, called "Elsewhere, PA), and sharing our first lines from our novels.  I gained many bits and pieces of valuable insight from the chat room experience...not that I can remember any of them this morning though!  I had planned on going to bed at 12:01, but then they started doing these things called "Writing Sprints."  OH MY GRACIOUS! They are so fun and addictive.  You have 5 or 10 or 15 minutes to write as many words as you can.  I wrote 500 words in one ten minute period!  That was pretty awesome!  Exhilarating!  So, to make a long story short, I stayed up really late and woke up really tired, but I had accomplished a fair amount on my book by 2:00am!

I feel like I'm adapting well to the role of being a writer, at least a stereotypical NaNoWriMo writer.  I'm currently unshowered, dressed in a tank top and shorts, despite it being windy and cold outside, and my housework is currently being neglected.  I'm also trying to remember that while my novel is a priority this month, that my health needs to be a priority too.  Eating sour skittles and cheese puffs (which may or may not have happened around 1:00am this morning!) is not appropriate for every day living, not to mention that exercise still needs to be a priority.

I've set some great exercise goals, just to keep me moving forward.  I will be pedaling for at least 30 miles a week, not to mention doing my strength training circuit four times a week.  It will be great to be doing two awesome goals at one time, although I will admit, with my schedule in front of me, it's a pretty daunting task.

But, daunting or not, this month is going to be a life changer!  I've got an awesome team of prayer support, an idea in my heart for a book that I feel is important enough to write, and a determination I haven't felt before!  Time to go, write, and see what happens!