NaNoWriMo: Final Tally

So the 30th of November has passed, and I realised that I have actually not touched my writing in... quite awhile. I've just been too preoccupied. But I did check how many words I managed to write. In total, I had completed 14,291 words.

What do I think of this? Nothing much. It's far from half the 50,000 word goal. But along the way I think I have learned some valuable lessons. Here's three that I can think of now.

Lesson 1: 50,000 words is a lot of words
At the beginning, I really thought that 50,000 wasn't too much and that I would easily pass the mark. But of course, this is not the case, proven evidently by my failure. And writing 50,000 words is no easy feat- there's a lot of planning that goes into it.

Lesson 2: Authors deserve so much praise
I read somewhere once that authors should never abandon their day job, until they are a John Grisham or J.K Rowling and could be assured of an income. Basically, 90% of authors should keep their day jobs. Now I find this intriguing because since I have my own life, I had a 'day job' as well, and I found it excruciating having to think about writing as well, particularly according to a schedule. I now have a lot of respect for these people. I mean, they come home from a stressful day at work and sit down and write. That's amazing. And for established authors, doing it every day is really impressive too.

Lesson 3: I'm not as disciplined as I thought
Yes, I admit it- there were times when I could've opened the story and start writing, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it because I either wasn't feeling it or was distracted. This is probably a fault of mine that I should seriously change if I want to get a novel near publication.