Congratulations, Sally, for hitting the target!

Now you have reached your goal are you happy with what you have achieved as a result of your Wordathon?

I am very happy to have achieved my 50,000 words in 24 hours goal, and to have had the experience of doing it (although I don’t think I would repeat it – no-one should ever try and do just one thing for 24 hours straight!). It has also meant that I have achieved another part of my purpose in doing it, which was to reach a lot of people and tell them about my writing. At least none of my friends is going to forget that I’m a writer now… 🙂
I am even quite happy with the product of the Wordathon – you can view the raw manuscript here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Xswhvv4W9ty7FCXMOXmncH6T0Ge2SOlm6XE8O6SpPcc/pub. It got a lot more messy than I expected – since I disabled the backspace key (which you can do in ‘Typewriter mode’ in the Write or Die program I was using), the typos and the gibberish words and the strings of letters increased exponentially around the 18-hour mark. Even so, I think it has helped me a lot to get a fair way into my plot and start to get to know where the story feels like its going.

What have you learned from doing this challenge?

I have learnt that I can really get a long way in a day, and I hope that I won’t find goals of 3,000 words a day quite as intimidating as I used to. I have also learnt in the aftermath that it took about three days for my brain to stop feeling tired (even with plenty of sleep), and my will-power to get anything done has taken even longer to return! In the end, doing something extreme and pushing my limits is fun (as long as it is a rare occurrence), but I can’t expect it to have a direct effect on my everyday habits or anything.

What is next for Sally?

Next – there is still the rest of the Newbie to Novelist challenge to complete! I set this up in two parts: first, the Wordathon, but second and more importantly, I want to get the rest of my first draft at least roughly sketched out and written by the end of the month. Since I just finished plotting the skeleton of the rest of the story yesterday, I think I have only done about a quarter of the plot so far… so in theory, I could be looking at about another 150,000 words by the 30th November! I doubt I’ll manage that, but I still need to get writing again, and I am still encouraging people to follow me and sponsor me. My website is http://www.sallybridgewater.com/blog.