Bah, there are plenty of novels that are right around 50k words. That's the reason why Chris Baty picked 50k as the goalpoint; he grabbed a skinny novel off his bookshelf, checked the pagecount, did some math, and said "So, ok, 50kish. Works for me!" Novels like "Flowers for Algernon", "The Great Gatsby", and "Brave New World" clock in right around 50k so it totally counts.
And, if you look at the rules for NaNo, it's to start a novel on November 1 and finish it the last day of November (ahem). Now, there's no one monitoring you. You can, if you want, "cheat" to your heart's content. There's absolutely nothing stopping me from writing 50k words in Book 2 and adding it to what I've got, then at the end of the month claiming my winner's bar. But them's not the rules and so I won't 'cause that's just me.
My problem is that it normally takes longer, so I don't think I can finish it in a month. And have it be good. I'd like it to be good.
OT but I like your site Kali.
The fun of NaNo is freeing yourself from the need to write something good.
I had editing disease something *fierce* before NaNo. I never finished anything truly long because I kept editing, wanting every sentence, every scene to be just right before I'd go on to the next. With the result that I almost never finished anything of any length. Just learning how to turn off my inner editor and get the words down was such a great experience, it was worth donating even though I was nearly broke last year.
And thanks! Having a site at all, with actual details about myself, was harder than I thought. I'm an immensely private person, almost paranoid about it. But I have to get over that if I want to have any kind of a writing career at all, so... It's out there. For what it's worth, it's there. I freak a little every time I see the counter go up, honestly, but that's what Valium is for, right?
