If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now, (even if we don't speak often) please post a comment with a COMPLETELY MADE UP AND FICTIONAL memory of you and me. It can be anything you want – good or bad – BUT IT HAS TO BE FAKE. When you're finished, post this little paragraph on your blog and be surprised (or mortified) about what people DON'T ACTUALLY remember about you.
Consider it a short writing exercise, just something to waste a few minutes of time, if you like.
So, ten minutes ago, roughly, I finished this year's NaNo project, coming in at just a hair over 50k words. While other years have been easy, this year, the project has been a struggle, and I had to fight to finish. In analyzing it, I've learned that I much prefer short stories and essays to novel length work, at least as a writer, though I do think some stories require the length of a novel to be told well. Though it may not seem so here, I guess I'm just naturally concise.
I've pretty much decided that this will be my last year with this project. I've completed it three years in a row, and never bothered to go back and edit. This time, some of the material I've generated, I WANT to edit, and I'm flirting with going back to the old stuff, and making it actually saleable as well. Too, I don't need NaNo to MAKE me write. I write anyway. I may not blog every day, but that's just one part of what I'm doing.
You'll notice that I've not posted any of what I've written for this project. There's a reason for that – I don't like posting raw forms of stories. Oh, I do it on moonchilde.com with OneWord and prompts, but those are completely different sorts of exercises.
That being said? I've enjoyed my time with NaNoWriMo, I just don't NEED it any more.