NaNoWriMo Day 28

I know the folks at the gym just miss me terribly!
A chunked away another 2291 words today, taking my protagonist into the revelation that turns his world upside down. And I thought I had already put him through it, but no. Now all bets are off.

Again, when I finish 50K, I'll have the minimum count for a Novella, but I won't feel finished. If I do wrestle an ending for this chapter of my protagonist's life and limit it to a novella, then I could try to submit to F&SF or similar anthologies, but I feel greedy. I want a big novel! I want to do what Paolini did at nineteen! Sucker not only wrote a book, but now its going to be a movie next month and a video game. Is he hated, I wonder, by starving artists? What really made his work this mini-phenom? I read the first paragraph of this thing today and I saw what I thought was the writing of a nineteen-year old guy, bless his heart. If it's that easy to be published, why aren't more of us being done so? What is really going on here?

The story, according to Wiki:
"In 2002, Eragon was published privately by his parents through Paolini International, LLC. To promote the book, Paolini toured over 135 schools and libraries, discussing reading and writing, all the while dressed in "a medieval costume of red shirt, billowy black pants, lace-up boots, and a jaunty black cap." Paolini created the cover art for the first edition of Eragon, which featured Saphira's eye. He also drew the maps on the inside covers of his books."

Okay, that makes it clearer. He wasn't plucked out of a slush pile. It was self- published first and then brought to someone's attention.

Hmmmmm.... it actually is easy to get published, if I wanted to.

I wonder ....