What It Takes

I wrote a novel two years ago that began in NaNoWriMo.
It went through an additional 19 months of continuing development, five author editings, and has found its way to two amazing beta readers, both really wonderful souls whose help has been simply awesome.
It is now in its typo editing.
(MUCH laughing has ensued.)
A novel is a journey.
Today, I just passed by 50,000 words on NaNoWriMo again, two years later.
It is a horrific, painful, heady, and exhilarating marathon to take part of.
50,000 words is a section of my new novel, closer to the half-way mark than the finish line.
I expect it to also take two full years until it is a polished work.
But, WOW, I love this NaNoWriMo project.
It fuels you up, wears you thin, exhausts you, and shows you the stuff that novels are made of.
Where they might begin anyway.
-RT