I'm Validated

Over the course of the next few hours many aspiring novelists will be seeing the picture to the left. It's not without sacrifice that these simple words grace their screen as thousands of people rush to the finish line to validate the work they've done over the past thirty days.

Your humble narrator is among them.

This was my first year participating in National Novel Writing Month, warmly known to its participants as NaNoWriMo or just Nano. The principle of this challenge is to write a novel in thirty days. Yes, you heard me right, an entire novel. Fifty thousand words to be exact.Thirty days total.

A month is a precarious thing and tends to slip through your fingers at an alarming rate. Let's recap what has happened to me over those short thirty days.

Besides the usual care and keeping of five kids there was, homeschooling, caring for my pathetic garden, grocery shopping, holiday shopping, a three day trip for an Army function, shopping and packing for said Army trip, a visit from an out of town friend, Thanksgiving and corresponding Back Friday, we were sick for about a week plus a few days, a baby was teething or constipated for the majority of the month, my MP3 player broke and hours were spent researching new ones, winter clothes were brought out and sorted, donations dropped off to the thrift store, there was a three day Woot off, a new school chair was ordered, egg dinosaurs were hatched, solstice presents hid, church attended, some college exams taken, Ikea furniture assembled, three pies made and lots of car repairs done.

It wasn't a month of me sitting in a bubble cranking out word count consuming scenes. Though all the madness I created an entirely new work of fiction. Is it Hemmingway? No. Is it Tolkien? Not a chance. Hell, Dr. Seuss' works are probably more inspiring but guess what? I don't care. There is now a completed novel with my name on the front. I did it. No one else.

I can't wait to do it again.