November has come and gone, and thus NaNoWriMo 2016 has also come to an end. I started the month with the beginning of what I thought would be a short story. I set a goal to make it a novella by the end of the month. It’s not quite there yet, but after connecting the dots here and there, and taking the ending beyond the bare bones, I do indeed have something publishable on my hands.

This year, I kept track of my output in a Google Sheet. I wrote 21 out of the 30 days in November. I began with 4,640 words, and ended with 26,078 just before midnight on December 1. That is 4,000 words short of my original goal, but I don’t mind that at all. You can see my progress in the nifty chart below. I love data!

So what next? I did write just a bit on December 1, just to get a bit closer to the end. Now, I’m in the middle of taking a few weeks off. I plan to come back to it over the holiday break, finish it up, and get the edits and such going in order to publish as an ebook by February. I have a con appearance coming up in March, and I would like to get physical copies ready for that if possible.

Here’s a final excerpt from the story, which I’ve decided to call “The Thing from the Drive In”. Enjoy!

Then, a deep bass rumble filled the air, and a spiraling burst of light shot out of the marble, heading over my shoulder. I turned as the dazzling lights zipped in an arc across all the rows of parked cars. On the movie screen, the scene changed, showing a closeup of the Thing that Time Forgot. The Thing opened its gigantic maw, filled with huge, razor sharp teeth. The horn on its snout glowed with radioactive green flame. It began to roar just as the blast of light from the marble hit the screen. Thousands of rainbow colored sparks exploded from the surface of the screen, raining down over the first few rows of cars. The Thing let forth a scream of primal fury, but this time, the sound wasn’t coming from the tinny speakers next to the cars. This time, the roar was coming from the screen itself.