NaNo Buddies and NaNo Winners.

One of the coolest things about the NaNoWriMo experience is that for one month - a full thirty days - you become a member of a very exclusive group of people. People who are, in one important aspect of life, Just Like You.

Writers. Wordfreaks and geeks. Storytellers, storylovers. People who understand when you say things that would make non-writers think you're ready for the nuthouse--or at the very least, overdue for a long vacation. Things like:

Yesterday I discovered that when Robert was six, he liked pulling the wings off butterflies.

or

Julia told me she just hates bread-and-butter pudding

or

Robert is simply refusing to fall in love with Julia. He wants to go hang out with Jane, and I don't even know yet who Jane is, except that she's a fat grade school teacher. What is he seeing in her that I don't know about yet?


This all sounds perfectly normal except for the minor detail that none of these people exist anywhere except within the confines of your mind. Then it becomes downright scary (to outsiders) and fascinatingly familiar (to insiders). And when you're doing NaNo, you have about 80 000 plus insiders ready, willing and able to share your fictional joys, sorrows and frustrations. And best of all, you don't have to explain yourself - they just know exactly what you mean when you moan about unco-operative main characters and annoyingly intrusive minor characters.

But the really, really BEST thing about NaNo is your personal group of Writing Buddies. The people you are most closely linked to and whose word counts you follow the way racing fans follow racing results. And today, I am proud to be able to share in the joy of my NaNo buddies who have reached the goal post - they have completed 50 000 words in LESS than a month.

Shirl hit 50K on Sunday morning (SA time) and Kelly also hit 50K on Sunday morning (EST time). Congrats and huge applause to both of them. :)) My other buddies are all hanging in there, astounding me with the awesomeness of their commitment despite things like houses full of guests, chemotherapy, broken hearts, and prolonged battles with the infernal internal editor!

Way to go, all my wrimos!

And my word count? 30,366 as of Sunday morning. I'm exactly on target - in fact, I'm about 360 words to the good!! :-)