The day was drawing to a close and I was a few hundred words away from 50,000. It was late; I was tired; I was so close. Technically, I had two choices:

1. Wait until morning to cross the finish line.
2. Keep the fingers flying and get 'er done!

Realistically, I only had one choice. I had to keep going. How could I stop when I was almost, nearly, 99.97% finished? So, the fingers kept flying and I completed another awful novel. (Okay, it isn't completed in the traditional "The End" sense of the word, but it's complete for the time being.)

This was the second year in a row that I didn't use my trusty Palm V. I used that device to write my first three NaNo-novels, but I didn't touch it once this month. I relied solely on Writeroom and Google Docs. I fear a NaNoWriMo tradition has ended.

The goal for next year will be to write something every day that is excerpt-worthy. I looked through this year's effort and couldn't find a hundred words worth sharing. That isn't true. I could find a hundred words worth sharing, but they were all in different sentences.

To illustrate my point, here's an example...

"Do you see anything, Morlock?" said Jake, gripping the railing and peering into the darkness. He could see nothing, but something was out there.

"No, not a thing, and that's what worries me." The Captain surveyed the cavern again and his eyes fell upon the single spotlight they had angled towards the ceiling. Slowly, he let his gaze follow the beam until it came upon a pair of glowing red eyes staring down at him from high above -- glowing red bovine eyes.

Amidst the screeching moos that echoed off the walls, Morlock heard a sudden whistling sound and he and Jake stared in horror as something plopped in the middle of the Foxy Lady's poop deck. Steam and stench rose from it.

"Oh, crap," said Jake.

In that mess, the word worth sharing is "bovine".

As I do every year, I have compiled some statistics. For comparison purposes, last year's stats are shown in parentheses:

• Words written: 50,306 (50,272)
• Hours of writing: 32.75 (40.75)
• Highest one-day count: 13,014 (3,918)
• Lowest one-day count: 0 (0)
• Percent of novel written on my PDA: 0 (0)
• Least productive day of the week: Thursday (Friday)
• Number of writing days: 20 (22)
• Number of zero-word days: 7 (1)
• Cups of coffee consumed (above "normal"): 20 (7)
• Pounds of Skittles eaten: 0.30 (0.25)

Congratulations to everybody who has already finished. To everybody else nearing the finish line, if you're in need of a thousand words or so, try adding a herd of vampire cows. That should help you get 'er done!