NaNoWriMo: 50,047 words: The Duke of Sunrises

I WON!

Yipee! I had thought I was going to finish off The Duke of Sunrises sometime this weekend. But I began to think about the weekend and realized: I'm running the Northern Central Trail Marathon tomorrow. And Sunday I'll probably be recovering. So I made an effort to pull it together before I came to work today. And then over my lunch hour I made a real push and watched the ticker finally click over 50,000 words.

As I had thought, my protagonist ended up being named Sam Small in honor of a character my father invented for his art classes.

Oddly enough, it's a pretty damn good story. Of course, I'm not so naive as to think it's ready for anyone to read at this point. It probably needs about a year's worth of editing, during which time I'd probably write about another 30,000 words to make it work. There are plenty of places where I've written in "I have to make Sara's back story more believable" or "write the trip across town". What I have is a rough first draft of a manuscript. But it's a damn good rough first draft of a manuscript.

Anyway, I'm glad not to be going into tomorrow's marathon with this hanging over my head! Wish me luck on the run!