I finally reached 50,000 words.

I would like to thank Rockford, who has very kindly let me write write write write write for the last few weeks; Poppy, who slept an extra hour and a half this morning; Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was a very long-winded poet; and adverbs, without whom I would not have reached 50k.

I don’t have a great feeling of triumph, mainly because of the role that “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” came to play in the story. And also because, even without Coleridge, the story is horrible. I haven’t decided yet if I’ll try it again next year. If I do, though, I definitely need to have a plot and an outline before November.

You might have noticed the enormous jump on my NaNoWriMo ticker today. It’s because I cheated. It was either cheat or quit. And I know that cheaters never win, but neither do quitters. So, really, I wasn’t going to win either way. But this way I’ll at least get a nifty little badge that says I won. And that’s all that really matters.

But is it really cheating? You decide.

My characters are reciting Samuel Taylor Coleridge poems. They’re on a road trip, and that’s what everybody does on road trips. It was a perfectly natural progression. Right?