I won. I won? I WON!

I'm kind of in disbelief right now. I wrote 10,300 words today; that's the most I've ever written in one day. I did it with eleven minutes to go until midnight, so I'm really tired. There was no jumping around for joy, no yelling, just an, "I did it!" to Emma and Sarah, who are the only ones down here with me. I honestly couldn't have done it if not for the Lord, who gave me the ability to write :) And then Emma, who did lots of word wars and sprints with me, and kept encouraging me and even did the dishes by herself tonight so I could write. Thank you, Emma! And to my writing buddy Rebecca, who also kept encouraging and pushing me on even when I thought I couldn't do it. Thanks a million, both Emma and Rebecca. You've helped me win my first NaNo!
I'm not done with the story; probably another 10,000 words or so, but I've never written a story this long before. It's a very nice feeling :D
And now, good night to all! And thanks to Mary and Kestrel, who both encouraged me in the comments for my blog posts :)

Day Twelve-Wait, Slow Down!

I am ashamed to say that I've let myself fall behind... but I'm not telling you how far behind :D It's only a few days, really, but it seems like a huge amount. So, to distract you from myself, I'm going to let ya'll see something my sister, Emma (14 yr. old) did :)
So, there's this thing called artPad on art.com, and Emma has been going there and drawing. You do it all on the computer, with either a touch pad or a mouse, and I tried it for a few minutes and got bored because it was really hard to make even a simple drawing on it. Lo and behold! Emma had been working at it for several hours, and she did a picture of Snow White from the Disney cartoon (looking at a picture and drawing from that), and then I sent her the link to a picture of Santa Claus, and she drew that as well.
The neat thing about artPad is that you can replay it so that you can see how she did it, basically, just sped up.
Here's the link to Santa Claus: http://artpad.art.com/gallery/?lukd8tvb38c (You can speed up the drawing, or skip to the end if you want).
Aaaand, here's Snow White: http://artpad.art.com/gallery/?luk3j616tga8
Now, what do ya'll think about those? She's a very good artist on paper, as well. She's got really good hand eye coordination obviously, and apparently a very steady hand, too!
Well, I'm off to write more NaNoWriMo!

Day Three Is Drawing to a Close

So, I've kind of been slacking off today, but I did finish yesterday's word count, and today's. I now have 5,005 words (and, no, I didn't devise it like that. It's just how it came out when I stopped writing :)
So, I can sleep happy and easy. Also, I have an excerpt of Red Sea Rising up on my website. So go check it out if you're interested!
Here's to finishing at 50,000 words by the 30th! Maybe even more words than that!
Also, I've decided to reward myself: if, on the seventh day of NaNo, I am still keeping up on my word count, I get to download and play the free trial of Robin Hood: Legend of Sherwood. It's a fun game that I've played before. So get crackin', Laura!
Have fun writing!

And We're Off!

So, today is the beginning of NaNoWriMo! Hopefully I can get to 50,000 words this month. I'm trying to overachieve today so that I can kind of go easy on days when there are a lot of things to do. Tomorrow I will probably start posting excerpts on my website (click here).
Happy writing, and high five if you're doing it, too! Also, if you're doing it, add me as a writing buddy on NaNo. The link to my profile is in the post below.
So far, I've written 1,689 words, which isn't a lot, I know, but it's a little bit over my daily word count, and I'm not done yet :)
Have fun!