Again mentioning only those days on which the count changed:
End of Day Twenty-seven: 44,002
End of Day Twenty-nine: 50,020
We win!
Due to a big push today, obviously. *8)
I like the ending of this one quite a bit, and for that matter I rather like the whole thing, although it would be easy to dismiss it as a cop-out, an easy trick to get word-count without much effort.
And it was easier than previous ones. But still fun, and interesting-feeling, and with an outcome that I like.
Complete novel lists are on the NaNoWriMo foyer page, and the WORDS page. So there are seven of the little beggars now, which is mildly amazing even to me (an' I wuz there!). Just for the sake of some Winner-time ego-stroking, let me write a sentence or three about each one (not like you could stop me if you wanted to):
2001, Straight on to the Exit. My first NaNoWriMo, and I had no idea what I was doing. More or less straight ("literary") fiction; a young college student in some generic and vaguely-European city stumbles upon an old basement full of things that let me get cheap wordcount in a pinch, with flashbacks to his childhood and his family, and flashsidewayses to mysterious other people. There are questions at the end of each chapter, for no apparent reason.
2002, In Dark. A more or less straightforward SF novel, set almost entirely on the skin of a giant comatose lizard floating in interstellar space. Yeah, I know, what a cliché!
2004, Take Good Care of Yourself and Others. Another SF novel, this one with humans in it. Playing with various ideas about what the world might be like coming up to the edge of Vinge's Singularity. With actual quotes from actual spam received in my actual email pasted in to boost the wordcount.
2005, Divertimenti. An epistolary novel (one of those annoying ones that are just lots of letters strung together), not SF, and only possibly lesbian vampire horror. Mostly experimenting with an unreliable narrator a bit, as well as that epistolary thing. No particular source of easy extra words in this one (he said proudly). Starts out a bit flat, I think, but gets better.
2007, Another Door. Reasonably straightforward fantasy novel, about a concept that I've always loved (see the Vasty Houses bibliography): a house that's bigger (in this case, much bigger) on the inside than on the outside. I'm quite fond of this one (might even read it someday!).
2008, Strangers (aka "Shore Leave"). Really quite straightforward SF, about this big alien spaceship that comes to Earth, and then Stuff happens. Various thoughts about culture-shock, the role of the Transcended in interstellar society, and aliens who look like Babar.
2009, Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence.. Not particularly straightforward at all, not really a novel, maybe a long poem or a chant or an interrelated series of poems, or something. The only evident characters are you and I. And it has punctuation in the title! Lyrics to "Last Night I had the Strangest Dream" and "Joe Hill" used without permission.
I'm still too soon out of that last one to know how much I'll like it long-term, but at the moment the afterglow is still quite nice.
One or more readers respond to How ya been? or some similar prompt:
Are you make of atoms?
Can you hear the stars?
It's getting cooler.
Did you make a pumpkin pie?
To all of which I can answer confidently in the affirmative. *8)
