Well. NaNoWriMo, for me at least, is over.

Actually, it was over for me on Saturday, but I didn’t write a blog post about it because I could not bear to type another word.

I was expecting an explosion of confetti from the screen. At least applause. I was disappointed. 

Why finish a week early, you ask? Well, two reasons. One, I was convinced by my twin sister (who also wheedled me into the romantic comedy, if you recall) to come home for Thanksgiving. So my window of time to write shrunk drastically. Second, fellow NaNo participant (and winner) Chandler Birch promised a candy bar to the first one to 50,000 words. Chocolate and competition proved to be extremely motivating.

The 50,000 word picture to prove to Chandler that I earned the candy.

Here was my starting synopsis: “A newcomer tries to shut down a tourist trap Wild West town, not realizing the lengths its residents will go to save it. Probably involves a guy who thinks he has Sherlock Holmes instincts, fake gold nuggets, an extremely cheesy Western hoedown musical, and jr. high dioramas where everyone makes trees out of broccoli.”

Well, as it turned out the newcomer ended up trying to save the Wild West town…by lying and planting fake “plot twists” for a documentary being made about the place. There were no Sherlock Holmes types or fake gold nuggets. There was an extremely cheesy Western hoedown musical that, I’m sure, would be quite painful in real life. And the dioramas with the broccoli trees—and all of the high school flashback scenes in general—were probably my favorite part of the story.

The slogan of NaNoWriMo used to be “Thirty days and nights of literary abandon,” until (I’m guessing) they realized that was a little pretentious. What they changed it to was the simpler, more inspirational: “The world needs your novel.”

And I’m here to say, very emphatically, that no. The world does not need my novel. The world will never need this novel, and even my immediate family members who love me and would say nice things about it will probably never see this novel.

That is a very good thing for everyone concerned, and especially for my pride. Because, by starting out with absolutely no plot outlining or character development, I ended up with 50,000 words of plot-less story and flat characters.

And yet, it was completely worth it. Why? Because I wrote stuff. Because, next time, I won’t be quite as terrible. Because I needed to fail at something, and fail miserably. Because romantic comedy is probably not my genre. Because unless I occasionally tried something where I am not guaranteed success, I will never grow.

(And also because, to accomplish that last one, I don’t want to try skydiving or brain surgery. Because the consequences of failure there are a bit more drastic.)

So, what’s next? NoNaNoWriTriMo. That is, Not-National Novel Writing Tri-Month. Meaning, my next writing goal is to complete 50,000 words by the end of February. Because, for all of the drivel I churned out this month, I realized that I was capable of putting words and sentences and paragraphs and chapters together little by little. (Except for those last two days where I wrote 10,000 word to get the chocolate. That was madness and will not be repeated.)

I will keep writing because I can. The world does not need my novel. I don’t even really need my novel (and wish it would crawl into my Recycle Bin and die there). But I do need to write.

And so I will.