Ding, Ding, Ding ... We Have A Winner!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, today I not only reached fifty thousand word, I surpassed them! My total word count as of now is 52, 400. Though, of course the story is not yet finished, and I'll be changing my word count widget in the next few days for one that will continue to track my progress past 50, 000.

I had a mini break-down last night after posting my latest blog entry. I was checking the NaNoWriMo forums, and stumbled upon an Open Office thread. As Open Office is the word processor I use (seriously, who can afford MS Word?!), I decided to check it out and see what other novel writers thought of the program.

Well, upon reading the thread, I discovered that Open Office counts 'curly' quotation marks as words, whereas the NaNoWriMo official word counter doesn't. So, first I had to go and change all of my 'curly' quotation marks (thank god for 'find and replace' huh?!) to regular ones.

Then, just to be sure, I copied and pasted my novel into an online word counter. The 47, 786 words that I had reported yesterday, were coming up as 45, 000 words.

In a panic, I vowed to work extra hard today. I wrote 6, 000 words today between the hours of ten this morning, and about half-two this afternoon. When I checked my word count online again, I was a little over 50, 000, so I decided to submit. Upon submitting to the NaNoWriMo site, I found my Open Office word count was correct, I was on 52, 400 words! ^_^

And so, I'm taking a break for now, to update my blog and have some dinner. I know I'll be back to it tonight, as Forbe (and his new-ish) travelling companion Rennah have just reached the country of Kanos; home of the shape-shifting clans. And there, they've met my second supporting character, Tobias, who is so many levels of awesome I can't even begin to explain!

Thanks for reading, and please continue checking back to see how my novel progresses past the 'winning' 50,000.