I'm out, guys. Can't do it. I've got too much going on to start from scratch and keep this up, so I'm one of the fallen ones for this year. I am taking this time to add on to an already completed novel, though, that's not quite at novel-length yet. I'm going to try and add 20-30 thousand words to it, but I know that doesn't count.

Anyway, good luck to everybody. I'm still hear to support you, but I'm out for the year. When you guys finish, I'd love some thoughts on my novel.

Reid

I'm in the same boat. Only just at 6000, well below target, and no real hope for improvement.

Life, it seems, has won this battle.

But I'm going to try to add to it for the rest of the month, even if just to see where it ends up - and to set the bar for next year!

Ya know, I haven't had the time or inclination to write for the last two days -- as anyone who knows me personally knows, there's a serious amount of stuff going on in my personal life. And I'm thinking about chucking it all, too. I mean, my book is a piece of crap. It's not like I'm going to go get it published somewhere. Part of me is thinking, why am I putting all this effort into such a POS? Just to say I finished? Not sure if I'm going to stay in the game at this point.

I'm so bummed, you guys! You're giving up and you still have 2/3 of the month left! Geez, you even get extra time over Thanksgiving to write!

Yes, you stay in it to say you wrote a novel. You don't have to say you wrote a good novel. But within those 50,000 crappy words will be some nuggets of something good. I do understand, Christine, that it just might be too much right now. But the point of this exercise is to prod us to actually *do* this. If I waited for divine inspiration to write my novel, I would grow old and die without doing so. Now I can say I've done it 3 going on 4 times. And it actually gets easier every year, believe it or not.