Victory is Mine!! #NaNoWriMo14

Well, I did what I set out to do--I won NaNoWriMo this year! I wasn't too excited when it first happened because it was 6:30 on a Sunday morning. But I caught up to the greatness of my victory after my daily caffeine fix. I'm glad that I was able to do it, and by proving that to myself, I know that I can continue writing for the rest of my life without worrying about taking time away from the money-making process. That's because I realized that 1667 words per day can happen in just three or four 20-minute writing sessions. This does not break the time bank whatsoever. I will now hold myself accountable for at least 1500 per day from now on. No more excuses and no more guilt.

Revisions? Well... those will probably have to be long weekend projects. Once I start that, I usually can't put it down for hours. Today is the only day I'm taking off before revisions start, so I have to get organized and find the best way to do it. I'm not going to revise this year's novel because it's too short of a turnaround. I need to get some space from this project. Instead, I will revise last year's novel. I didn't finish that one in a month, but I did finish it so it will be ready for Phase Two tomorrow.

I'm also celebrating because I saved Amazon gift cards for the past few months (I somehow seem to win a lot of them online...) and was finally able to get a new Kindle Fire HD 7. It came in today, which made it seem like a prize I awarded myself for all of my efforts. I'm a happy camper all around.

A Little Luck Doesn't Hurt

I received a pleasant surprise this weekend. Typically I never win contests and giveaways (if you don't count the ones from Goodreads), but I won a free gift card this weekend. But I can now tell you that money does not buy happiness. In fact, it's a little frustrating. While it was great that I won, I got to the store and just didn't know what I wanted. Nothing appealed to me. I did get some clothes and a few things for the family, but it was really hard to try and spend money without wasting half the day--not that I'm really complaining. I am grateful for the luck. It's just too bad it wasn't a pile of cash handed to me. That might have saved me an hour or two.

So, since I spent too much time shopping this weekend, I'm hitting work hard this week. I know that things will dry up closer to Christmas, so I'm planning ahead for that. I'm also lining up those drafts and prioritizing since I know I'll have some free time again eventually. For one of the drafts, I'm going to have to choose whether I want to send in something that may not be ready or just miss the deadline and keep working on it. The deadline is the 21st of this month, so we'll see how that goes.