Viking Pride

I WON! When I uploaded the 50,000+ words of my yet-unfinished novel onto the Nanowrimo website just after midnight on November 24th (meaning it was actually November 25th) I was greeted with a lovely barrage of images telling me that yes, I had officially won the amazing challenge of National Novel Writing Month 2008. I could download all the little winners badges to brag on my Facebook and blog pages, I could fill out and print a paper certificate saying that I had completed the challenge and am now entitled to crazy sick bragging rights, and my progress bar, once blue with incomplete word count and then green with 50,000 words or more, turned purple and sparkly with victory.
There's going to be a party at Victory Cafe on Markham street on December 1st, aptly titled the TGIO (thank god it's over!) party, for all the Nanoers in Toronto. I can't wait to go, dressed in something festive and sparkling, to celebrate with all my new, kooky, crazy Nanowrimo buddies.
My novel isn't done yet, but it will be soon. I'm going to do my best to wrap it up in the next few days so I can get started on some long-ignored school work before the strike ends. I know how the story is going to end, but now that I've reached that 50K goal I feel like I might rush to finish the rest, or not do it at all. I've only ever finished one story that I've started, and that was because I entered it in a contest and the ending still was more ambiguous than anything else. This story needs a finite ending, or at least a beginning of a new world.
I'm off to York to do some professional development stuff. I'll do another blog entry on the All-Night Writing session I attended over the weekend and put some pictures up as well.

-Laur