The past month has been a blast. I've written on my computer until my fingers gave in, stayed up late at night trying to reach the final stretch, and spent all the spare time I had, anywhere in any place, writing in a sketchpad and occasionally going back to count how many words I had down.
And I won.
It was late at night on November 30th when I was about to finish. My friend Tyler wouldn't quit sending me messages on my cellphone. He told me to keep him updated, so I did. When I hit 49,000 words, I was freaking out and my fingers were shaking. I could barely hit the "send" button on my phone.
It was late in November when I made the decision to do NaNoWriMo this year. November 11th, to be exact. I had heard about it in 2008, right before it had begun, but I skipped it and decided to try it when I was a little older. Looking back at it, I'm pretty glad that I didn't attempt at the age of eight; it was hard for me to keep up with my word count, even three years later. I didn't even get to ten thousand words until the week after I had started to write.
So, as I was saying, I had sent the message to him and immediately put my phone down to continue writing. I was so close, yet so far. Only a thousand words to go. I could do this. I knew I could do this. I didn't even bother to take any breaks that night; my eyes were ready to droop shut and take a long nap, but I forced them to stay open. I had to write. I couldn't stop writing. If I stopped now, I'd never reach 50,000 words!
Let me go back farther and help you understand.
The morning of that day, I was doubting that I could make it. My friends at school reassured me that I could. I was only at 41,000 before I had come home from school. I didn't have any time to spare to write at school that day; I couldn't go up to open library (pretty much, it's study hall, if you want to call it that) and write because we didn't have it on Wednesdays. I was ready to quit and try again next year. I even had a cold, and I had to go home early anyway that day because I was ready to throw up at my desk.
When I got home, I laid in bed for a while and let my eyes rest. I took around twenty minutes to get myself together before getting out of bed and picking up my laptop. I turned it on and immediately opened up my story. I started to write like there was no tomorrow; I used Write or Die, MyTomatoes, and NaNoWordSprints from Twitter. Sometimes, I didn't use anything at all and just typed without anything to motivate me except for the thrill of getting it all done.
At some point, I fell asleep next to my computer. Could you blame me? I was tired, I felt like I was going to throw up, and I had barely gotten any sleep the night before because I stayed up writing again. The only reason I had woken up was because I heard my dad arriving home and coming up the staircase to say hello to me. I sat up and rubbed my eyes before looking at the clock. I had four hours left, and I still had to eat dinner!
Until dinner and after dinner, I typed and typed and typed. That's all I did. Besides Tyler occasionally texting me and asking for my word count, I had no distractions and had no reason to procrastinate. This was the last day. This was the day that I had to get it all over with; it would all be worth it. I would be done and I would get five free copies of my book once I finished editing it after November, a winner's t-shirt, a certificate, and the pride of being an eleven year old writer.
I was not a "want-to-be-a-writer". I was a writer.
I became a writer when I powered to 50,000 words at 10:45pm on a Wednesday night. I became a writer when I pushed myself to reach my goal late at night, when everyone thought that all hope was lost. I became a writer when I forced myself to face my fear of not reaching my limit after all the time that I had.
I am a writer.
-Zoe
Congratulations!!
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