National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) was an odd experience for me this year. I’ll cut to the chase and tell you that I didn’t meet the “winner” requirements. I didn’t make 50,000 words for the month.

I finished at 37,154.

How would one even write out that number?

Thirty-seven thousand, one hundred and fifty-four?

Such a clunky word-count total. Nothing sexy about it at all.

It would’ve been nice to reach 40,000. But that didn’t happen, either. So yeah, I lost.

But that’s okay. There’s a bright side.

I spent part of NaNoWriMo finishing a book that I had started writing in June. That’s right. I cheated, doggonit.

NaNoWriMo participants are supposed to start writing a brand new book on November 1. Instead, I continued writing the book I had been working on before. New words are what counts.

Luckily, NaNoWriMo cheating isn’t a big deal. They even call us rebels…