It’s 3:38 PM, Pacific Standard Time, on 11-30-2008. At 11:59 PM I will need to have written 50,000 words to “win” this years National Novel Writing Month.

That’s not going to happen.

I’m just under 29,244 words, which means I’ve got just over 20,000 more words to go. If I sat down and typed non-stop all the way until 11:59, made no edits, didn’t look back, and just typed, I might be able to come close.

However, this exercise was very good for me. I got to work on a fiction project in most of my “spare” moments, which meant that I was perpetually working on something creative. Not to mention the fact that the story has become my background “notes” for a graphic novel miniseries I’d like to do sometime soon.

I really, really like the story, and I’m having a lot of fun just thinking about it. My goal is to finish the story by Christmas so that I can go back through and do a first edit. I want to finish the novel in its entirety by early next year so I can find a way to publish it.

However, I will be writing as furiously as possible whenever I can today to see just how close to 50,000 words I can get by the time NaNoWriMo ends tonight.