I finished my book yesterday, clocking in at just over 50k. It was exhilerating, exhausting, frustrating, sometimes discouraging, and, ultimately, enlightening. In order to finish, I had to throw my perfectionism out the window. I had to give myself permission to write crap, to let typos and misspellings go uncorrected, to allow glaring continuity errors and clunky prose. And the end result, shockingly, is the best thing I've ever written. I like my characters; they're weird and funny and smart. The situations I've put them in are plausible and intriguing. The happy ending is far less corny than I had feared; they deserve it, after what I put them through.
Yes, I'm tooting my own horn. Loudly. But I think that's kind of the point of NaNoWriMo. You can no longer convince yourself that writing has to be arduous and drawn out, that a true writer must wait for inspiration to strike. It turns writing from something ephemeral and spiritual into a messy, honest day's work. You end up with an honest-to-god book on your hands, something that can be edited, refined, and polished until it shines.
All that comes later, though. For now, I'm going to take a well-deserved week or two off from writing (except for the occasional blog post). I've got some TV to catch up on, a house to clean, a baby to play with, and some Sim lives to lead, with no guilt that I should be doing something else.
