Unconventional NaNoWriMo: In Conclusion

It's December, so NaNoWriMo, the classic November writing challenge, is officially over.

This year, I chose to do my own unconventional version of this challenge. If you haven't already seen my previous posts about this, you can check them out here, here, and here.

Quick summary: I started off the month with somewhat lofty goals, had a tiring yet successful first week of the challenge, and then had a sudden emergency at the end of week 2 (so I never really posted about the work I got done after week 1).

Happily, the emergency situation has turned out way better than expected!

On November 14, I received news that my family's dog, Coconut, was probably near death after having multiple seizures and being hospitalized overnight. The vets said that his symptoms were consistent with either a brain tumor or a brain bleed, while an x-ray of his abdomen revealed a large, probably cancerous mass and a blood test revealed that his platelet levels were extremely low. This was all shocking because even though he is 15 years old, he had seemed very healthy. My siblings and I therefore all rushed home to hopefully be able to see him one last time.

Well, it's now been nearly three weeks and he is doing astonishingly well! He was put on anti-seizure meds and steroids, which have worked perfectly. He hasn't had any more seizures, and the symptoms he had after the initial seizures (such as confusion and difficulty walking) have pretty much completely gone away. His lifespan is still very uncertain, but the vet said it is possible that he could live comfortably for months at this point! Yayy!!!

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Back on the subject of writing, here is my original list of goals for the month of November:

1. Write and post on Vocal Media 9 times
2. Set up an email newsletter and design + order bookmark "business cards"
3. Re-plot my novel
4. Write/create my second draft (as much as possible)

In the end, I....didn't actually accomplish any of these. I only posted on Vocal Media 3 times, I only made partial progress on the email newsletter and bookmarks, and I didn't actually work on my novel at all.

Nonetheless, I really don't feel bad about it! I had a great couple of weeks with my family and dog, which was the most important thing, but even in terms of writing, I am really happy with what I accomplished.

My story "Video Footage of Missing Girl" was named as a runner-up in the Unreliable Narrator challenge, which was very exciting! And I also made significant progress on the newsletter and bookmarks, even though I didn't finish them. The total lack of progress on my novel was admittedly a fail, but I learned from this that I need to carve out dedicated noveling time each week, so I expect to have much more success in the future. (The new plan, starting tomorrow, is for Tuesday and Wednesday to be my dedicated noveling days, while other types of writing and business activities can only be done on other days. I will let you know how this has worked out in my upcoming post about the history of work on my current novel and what I'm planning to do next (I plan to write and post this in February).

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Thank you for reading! I've gotten quite a few notifications during my time away, so it will take me a little while to get through all of them, but I will reply to all comments as soon as I can!