Crossing the Line

After being unable to write every day for this year's NaNoWriMo, I pulled out all the stops and managed a mammoth 5250 words on Friday! Never have I written anything near this amount in one day.
The secret?
I abandoned what I was writing and focussed on a scene where a main character gets swept out to sea and the tide takes him towards some rocks. There is a rescue attempt from the shore; someone swims out with a rope tied round his waist. It's during the Iron Age in Britain so no high tech methods available.
My fingers couldn't keep up with the pace of my thoughts. It was a blast to write, incredibly exciting and I lost all sense of time and place.

This year's NaNo was very different from last year's.
Since last year I took the NaNoNovel 2009 through Holly Lisle's How To Revise Your Novel course. And then I began her How To Think Sideways course.
I'm not sure I followed my Sentence to the T but I do have a series of scenes which have all the bits a scene should have. I derive a certain degree of satisfaction from that :)

Now that I've finished the 50,000 words there are so many writing options available to me so I don't feel so let down and flat as I did this time last year.

I downloaded Scrivener for Windows beta so tomorrow I'll load all my scenes into it and have a look at just what there is and what else needs to be added. It is disjointed at present and a few things need ironing out, stiching together and generally prettying up.

And next year...I intend to start planning for NaNoWriMo in July!

If you entered NaNoWriMo this year, how did it go for you?
And if you didn't, you might want to consider joining in the fun next November 1st.