I ran out of gas at 30848 words about a week ago and decided to give the whole thing a miss. Forcing myself to write just made me write crap, and winning isn’t worth it to me. I’ll revisit the story some time in the future, probably in short story form, but for now I’m a loser.
48825… And I think I’ve run out of plot! I’ve got a denoument that needs writing, but I’m not sure it’ll be long enough!
Another loser here. 12,238 words with 2 days left to go. I don’t see it hitting 50k.
But a happy loser – finishing the story is more important to me than winning the contest. And doing as much as I did in the contest gave me more of a head start that I would’ve been able to do otherwise. I’m still planning to finish the thing by the end of the year, but actually setting aside time to do it, and focusing on completion instead of a word count. And I totally plan on trying it again next year.
And congrats to everybody who has or is close to finishing!
ArrMatey!: I ran out of plot at 42K, and the forums suggested I add pirates. They claim you can fit a pirate raid into any book, and with a name like yours, I’m sure you’ll make it work. I actually made a place for it, but I pulled a last-minute plot twist and an earthquake, and the rest is history.
And I mean history. WINNER HERE! First time, too.
Heh. Thanks for the suggestion… But it’s a pirate novel to begin with!
However, as of 5 PM last night…
WINNAH!
50003 words! (I was 10 words shy, and added a sentance about the weather in the last chapter. 
)
I feel like I just ran a marathon, mentally. I’m so thrilled that I made it!
12281 words here. I’m still (somewhat) happy, because this is about twice as far as I made it last year, which in turn was twice as far as I’d made it the year before.
If I keep this up, I’ll be in the winner’s circle come '08!
50, 202. The story’s only about 2/3s done, but I’ve won the challenge 
50735
according to their word counter.
According to mine, I’m at 506-something-something. But still, I made it.
And I didn’t even have pirates.
I also didn’t have contractions.
And it most certainly will edit down to, what, 2/3rds of that. But this year, I feel it’s worth giving it an edit.
Anyone up for NaNoEdMo in March?
I was going to wait for NaNoEdMo, but a local bunch are meeting once a week to for editing beginning next week, and I’d really like to be a part of that. I have lots of filling in to do, some fixing and cutting too. I actually kind of like my story, which is a nice bonus.
I’m glad to see the numbers of SDMB Winners adding up. Good luck to those who are sweating it out today, too!
Well, it’s all over for another year. :mad:
Yup, mixed feelings. Hey you can’t even enjoy goofing off from your writing when you don’t have a set goal.
Anyway, I just spent a few minutes playing with the Team 2005 page, and this is what I found:
Total entrants: 59,699
Number reporting 50,000 or more word count: 31,318 or 52.4%
Wow, over half WON – that amazes me.
Number reporting word counts of ZERO: 10,046 or 16.8%
Which leaves only 30.8 percent who tried to be point of entering a wordcount at least one and yet fell short.
Anyway, I never counted how many of entered, and how many won, but I bet we did better than 52%!
Those numbers are amazing! In 2004 there were 42,000 entrants and only 6,000 won. 