I am happy to report I “validated my novel” on the NaNoWriMo site yesterday evening–coming in at 50,050 words according to NaNo’s counter.

So at the end of the month I wound up with…

– Almost 35,000 words of The Monster and the Prince, which puts me much farther along than the 10,000 word stalled draft I had in October.  I also now feel like I will be able to finish this eventually–once some ideas settle down a bit.

– One 8,000 word short-story featuring characters from my in-progress novel draft, The Wanderers.  For people who have been reading excerpts this month, that’s the Sleeping Beauty one (sorry, it’s title-less…suggestions?)  If I go with self-publishing for the novel, I figure a short story set after the end will have some uses–and it was enormous fun to write!

– One nearly-finished short story approaching 7,000 words, with the same characters and loose time-frame as the story above.  This one’s a bit more fluff than substance, but I might be able to do something with it.  I hope to finish it up by this weekend at the latest–at least a version where the characters get to solve the problem the easy way.  If I made them take the hard way, I’d have the beginnings of a novel sequel.  Maybe some day!

– And finally, some 2,500 words starting a short story that would fit between Chapters 1 and 2 of The Wanderers, heavily featuring Tom the talking cat, and good for promotion…when I finish it eventually.

All in all, not a straight-forward NaNo…but I’m calling that some satisfactory work done!  Next project–do one last, final, really-the-last-time pass through The Wanderers for final final revisions (can you tell I’ve revised a few times?), then send it on to beta-readers for feedback.

It’s been a fun, albeit slightly exhausting month.  I found that what really worked for me was getting up earlier than usual every day to write before work.  Result–on my lowest day (besides today), I still wrote nearly 800 words.  And by the end of the month, I’m getting tired!  Oh well–time to sleep more in December.  And revise that novel!

One last excerpt?  Well, how about just a paragraph demonstrating how much fun it is to write short stories about characters I know well.  See, Jasper has Rules, which he very thoroughly believes in.  And after an entire novel playing with his Rules, it’s easy to start a short story by flinging Rules around…

It was a very stupid argument, and one that would have been largely incomprehensible to anyone listening, considering it involved a lot of throwing back-and-forth of Rules.  In the twisting ways of conversations, Julie wasn’t even sure exactly how it had started.  They had been talking about where to travel next, and Jasper hadn’t wanted to commit to anything.  Julie had made a complaint about Rule #2 (Never make plans).  The conversation had begun to escalate when she dragged in Rule #3 (Never trust a magician), just to object to on principle.  There were heated references to Rule #23 made on both sides (Never underestimate the amount of damage that can be done by an idiot) and the entire thing culminated with Julie making an ill-considered remark about Jasper’s “stupid rules,” shortly after which he stalked out of the room muttering about Rule #18 (Always travel alone).