[As in, the title should be “Allison Renner Writes a Blog … Sometimes.”]

NaNoWriMo has taken over my writing world this year, and it’s one of the best feelings ever. I’m still behind in terms of word count, but I’m catching up every day. And while I’m catching up, I feel like my story is getting stronger. I’m developing my main character more, creating predicaments and interesting scenes, and I’m really enjoying myself. I haven’t written something on this scale in years.

In fact, I’ve only written on this scale for NaNo, but I haven’t finished for many many years, mostly because of the daunting scale. Writing a novel is way different than writing a short story, and I haven’t even completed one of those satisfactorily in quite a while. I’ve been writing little blips here and there, patting myself on the back for the daily habit more so than what I was actually creating. And that’s important too, so I won’t dismiss it, but working on this big project… wow, it’s been amazing.

I’m currently at 19,118 words on a day when I should have 28,339 to finish on time. Stats tell me that at this rate I’ll finish on December 14th, and honestly, I’m ok with that. Because I know this story will make me finish. I need to get this written. But I’m not done writing today – it’s early afternoon, and I have time to write. I have days off for the Thanksgiving holiday to catch up and push through to the end. I think I’ll make it, even if I’m pretty behind right now.

But more than the satisfaction of the word count (and believe me, it is satisfying to update that word count), is knowing that I’m creating something good, something big, something I haven’t practiced in so long I wasn’t sure I knew how to do it anymore. But I do. And I am.