I win. :) And I like this icon by derringdo better than the actual winner icons, so I'm using it in celebration instead.

Unlike last year, I set out to write an original story rather than fanfic. Also unlike last year, I ended up folding in an assortment of bits and pieces of Neopets and Star Wars writing as dream sequences or my main character's scribblings. But I made my wordcount, and I have an original-fic plot I rather like in principle (although I think the execution could use some work), a few wins on the Neopets Storytelling contest, an NT entry, and a new and rather weird Star Wars fic.

One thing I hope to do differently from last year involves actually going ahead and writing stuff in December. Possibly the next chapter of last year's story, in fact! It is sad and lonely and neglected.

Now, if I do this next year, maybe I should try actually writing every day and/or finishing the story. That would be... novel.

;)

I suspect that title looks more pretentious than punnish at this point, but I guess I'll leave it.

I have been waffling back and forth about NaNoWriMo for some weeks. I did it last year, yes. (To anyone who hasn't forgotten about "Something Better Than This": not abandoned. Honest. *mumbleblush*) On the other hand, last year I also kept going back to the Rules Forum (kind of like picking at a pimple) and growing increasingly annoyed. And this year I've been alternating between enthusiasm for the idea I used to think NaNoWriMo was about -- getting people around to writing, en masse and crazy -- and disgust with myself for thinking about going along with an event that deliberately excluded and discouraged anyone who, say, liked to cowrite (and was willing to go for 50K apiece) or had been trying to get around to getting past the beginning rather than starting at all.

So yesterday I actually signed up, in an excess of enthusiasm, and last night I ran across an example of the discouragement and went to sleep and woke up gloomy. It occurred to me that this was pretty definitely a case of taking things too seriously.

Aha.

Taking oneself too seriously is discouraged in the official rules. There are all sorts of weird arbitrary things people do to pad wordcount -- and those are approved. The founder of NaNoWriMo explains in the history section that he produced most of the regulations on the theory (well, he calls it knowledge) that unbending rules and merciless deadlines were necessary to get writers moving.

So. I maintain -- and I refuse to care if any of the staff or anyone in the Rules Forum or Chris Baty himself disagrees, and I'm not going to ask them either -- that if these unbending rules are getting in the way of writing, the correct thing to do is logically to go right up to the edge and contort. They can't bend to get more in your way, remember?

You already have some text written? As some unusually sensible person in the rules forum said last year, dub it notes or call it a previous installment -- you can edit the works together after November. You want to write with someone? Say you're writing interrelated stories out of order. Heck, you want to write a screenplay, which he explicitly says is outside the scope of NaNoWriMo? Call it a novel in an unusual format. Whatever. Just, for heaven's sake, don't ask people to tell you no.

So there.