In 2014, Penobscot Bay Pilot put the spotlight on novelist Danielle Bannister on the frustrations, challenges of penning 1,667 words a day in our story: Chapter One: Arrgghhhhh! In her words, this is what became of the novel she was working on.

It has been one year since I began work on The ABC’s of Dee, a romantic comedy I started last November during the NaNoWriMo challenge. We got 30 days to write 50,000 words. Yikes. Although I gave it a good shot, I fell shy by about 6,000 words. I have tennis elbow, and during that month, my hands got really bad. There were days that I wanted to write, but just couldn’t because of the pain. My kids saw my disappointment when I didn’t get to print off that silly piece of paper and declare myself a ‘winner.’ It was ridiculous, really, but it hurt. I somehow thought I had failed. My then 9-year-old daughter decided to remind me of my success and gave me a drawing of a medal.

She knew that I hadn’t failed. She was proud of what I had accomplished and she wanted me to be proud of it too, which is why it still hangs on my wall. It is the constant reminder that I am going after my dreams. I’m not giving up.

That’s sort of how NaNoWriMo works, too. It focuses you. It gives you the permission, nay, insists that you just keep writing and don’t dwell on the words—yet. Not in this draft. It has taught me that your first draft of any novel will be epically bad, so bad, in fact, you may question calling yourself a writer. And that’s okay. Much of that first draft won’t make it to the final product. The first draft is where the bones exist. The real work of novel writing comes in the subsequent drafts when you weed out what doesn’t work and build upon what does. What NaNoWriMo does, is, it gives you a month to build your story’s framework— not a finished novel, but the healthy start of one.

That said, did I ever finish what I began last November? Did I ever find those remaining 6,000 words? Did I ever write those blissful words “The End?” I did. In fact, it ended up being just over 70,000 words. I self-published it in April of this year, where it was placed the top ten books of the summer and of the quarter over at the blog For the Love of Books and Alcohol. My agent loves the story has begun shopping around its movie rights.

Does all this mean I’ve quit my day job and moved into a mansion? Hardly. I’m still eating PB&J sandwiches and store brand chips for lunch and probably will ‘til the day I die. Getting rich isn’t my goal as a writer. Making others feel something is. In that, I think, am beginning to succeed at, book by book, thanks, in part, to the work done during NaNoWriMo.

Danielle Bannister lives with her two children in Midcoast Maine. She holds a BA in Theatre from the University of Southern Maine and her Masters degree in Literary Education from the University of Orono. You can visit her website at: daniellebannister.wordpress.com/