I WON!

I am in awe right now.  Why?  Because I did it!  

I wrote 50,000 words on my novel in less than a month.  This is such an incredible feeling right now that I'm not even sure I can describe it.  I guess I'll try. 

Imagine this: You are an average person.  Blessed, certainly, but you don't feel that you've done anything that's overly special.  You've always wanted to build a giant wallaby out of Legos, but you've never devoted the time to it to make it happen.  (Yeah, I know that it's kind of an off the wall goal, but use your imagination.)  

You've got a few bits of the wallaby built, but it's been collecting dust for months in you closet.  
One day, you decide to challenge yourself and spend a few hours every day putting that wallaby together.  You do, and each day you get better and better at finding which pieces go where.  

Four days before your goal ends, you've got most of a wallaby.  It's big, it's beautiful, and most importantly, your hard work has done this.  If you had not spent your time working on this, the world would be without a mostly-complete marsupial made out of Legos, and that would have been a shame.  

Okay, so maybe I haven't quite made it out of this challenge with my sanity completely intact, but I am proud of myself for making it this far.  Better yet, there's still more to go, and I'm excited about that.  I have more to write.  After that, I have editing to do.  I am still a ways away from publishing my work, but I am much farther along than I was at the beginning of this challenge.  

So, friends, I am going to jump up and down after I post this.  I am going to celebrate for the rest of the day and maybe even the rest of this week, knowing that I did what I set out to do.  I didn't give up, and even if most of my writing is terrible, I saw this challenge through to its completion.  

I WON!