WE DID IT! Adryn and I both managed to hit 50,000 words this year on NaNoWriMo, which is approaching the halfway point on both of our novels! At 57,600 words myself, I'm proud to say I'm exactly at the middle, and word-count wise, I'm almost exactly where I wanted to be.

Seriously, the notecarding system really helped me work things out. No more waking up, brushing teeth, having coffee, getting dressed, walking to work, OMGMAGICBATTLE scenes because I don't know where I'm going. I can just start at walking to wOMGMAGICBATTLE.

As for RAVEN (Weiward), she has really utilized the spirit of NaNoWriMo to thoroughly plot and

develop her book. She's disciplined herself to set aside an hour or two a couple times a week to devote to her story, and she's managed to notecard the entirety of the EPIC fantasy that's been in her brain for three years.

Discipline, I think, is the major thing that we've all taken away from NaNoWriMo. For me, it's the discipline to make a mutable outline and stick to it, to force myself not to care so much about editing my first draft as I go. For Adryn, it's the butt-in-chair-fingers-on-keys discipline, which

she has struggled with for years. For Raven, it's the discipline to let go of perfectionism and make the nebulous, awesome idea into something that can actually be translated onto the page. And we did it, thanks to the competitive, productive spirit of NaNoWriMo.

I'm proud of us all.

Thank you, National Novel Writing Month. We'll see you again next year.