NaNoWriMo diary 2017

I have sooooo much editing to do, and so many projects to finish... but it's hard to resist NaNoWriMo! The Swindon group do it so well! Look at all these lovely goodies they gave us in the planning meeting! :-)

Writing prompts, a "motivational monster", and a huge
cup of frothy coffee. Bring it on, NaNoWriMo!

This post is my NaNo diary for 2017. I'll be updating it throughout November 2017. It'll mostly consist of me moaning about my word count, so you've been warned!

If you're a NaNo-er and fancy a new writing buddy, click here to see my profile on the NaNoWriMo site. We all need more buddies! :-)


NaNoWriMo diary 2017

1st Nov	5,156
NaNo is off to a good start this year! Some lovely fellow-writer friends put on a Halloween party and then (at the very moment of midnight!) we all started typing like mad!  Okay, we didn't really "type like mad". In true writer tradition, we all started moaning (like mad) about NaNoWriMo. Writing is a funny old game... it's horrible at the time, but lovely when you're done! A bit like running a marathon - it's just one of those things that's great to look back on and say "I did that". Doing it, however... ugh.  Anyway, we type-type-typed and typed some more. I hit 500 words before yawns overtook us all. Once home from the party, I stayed up a few hours and managed to hit the daily NaNo target of 1,667 words. It was quite nice waking up on the 1st of November having already done my quota... I might try that again next year! I carried on and managed 5,156 words in total on the first day, which gives me a lovely head start. I'm struggling though. So far all I've produced are weird little flash fictions, and it's been very much "blood from a stone" when getting ideas to fall out of my brain. Maybe it's about time I actually started to believe those people who tell me that NaNoWriMo is easier if you plan it first?
2nd Nov	11,443
Had a bit more luck today! Found some old half-finished novel attempts and added a few more chapters to each. I started a new novel as well: a fun one about God suddenly turning up in a guy's living room and telling him off for being too wimpy to ask someone on a date... "I need you two to get together," says God, while drinking coffee and sitting on the guy's sofa. "Your great-grandkids are very important for the next stage of my plan."  So far this new story's turning out to be good fun, so I might stick with it (rather than leaping around to various projects). Last year's NaNo was frantic. Several of us raced, and that led me to finish the official NaNo word count in only three and half days. For some daft reason, I thought I'd try to race that record this year... but it's not working! However this insane plan did give me 6,287 words today, so the total is now 11,443. I definitely think this is a good way to do NaNoWriMo: getting ahead in the first few days really does take the pressure off.
3rd Nov	16,494
I'm carrying on with my 'god on the sofa' story for now, because it feels like it has novel-length potential. It's shaping up to be quite a fun story! God's given up trying to get a nervous guy to meet his his soulmate, so is putting pressure on the guy to get him to actually talk to the girl. It's going well so far, but I definitely need to flesh out the protagonist a bit more on the rewrite. Today's total was 5,051 words which gives me a NaNo total of 16,494.
4th Nov	20,317
Today was the first Saturday of November which means it was the first NaNo "write-in" day! A gang of local scribblers met in the local library to: write, motivate each other about writing,  moan about writing, and generally just try to force some words out of the head and into a manuscript.  Unfortunately, even though these write-in sessions come with the best of intentions, I've got to say they really don't work when it comes to upping the word count! We all sit around chatting over coffee and cake, and very few words get typed. Oops.Maybe I'll get a bit more done if I remember to take my headphones next time. I only managed to get 745 words done by the end of the two hour session, but was later able to push the day's total to 3,823, which has taken me over 20k! Official figure is now 20,317 words, and I'm hoping to hit the NaNo halfway point tomorrow.
5th Nov	23,339
It was a struggle to get started today, but a late push gave me 3,022 words. I'm still having trouble focusing on one project, but I tend to work that way anyway (not just in writing but in everything!). It's nice to see each of the projects progressing a little further each day. I wrote a few pieces of weird flash fiction to get me warmed up, and then put the rest of the typing effort into an old novel attempt that had been put aside and forgotten about.  This 'old novel' is a paranormal romance story... that's a long way from what I usually write, but I'd heard that genre is one that sells very well so I thought I'd give it a try! It's turning out quite corny, (but I think that fits reasonably well with the genre!) and I've thrown in a few vampires and a werewolf just for the hell of it. After all, it's not like a million other writers aren't writing paranormal fiction about vampires and werewolves, right?!  Total NaNoWriMo word count is now 23,339. Nearly halfway!
6th Nov	26,472
I'm still struggling to force myself to write during the day... but I'm managing to get some done late at night. I've always had problems getting writing done during normal working hours! Today gave me another 3,133 words (spread over several different projects) which took me over the halfway point - woohoo! The NaNo total is now 26,472.
7th Nov	29,560
I was feeling stuck on my "god on the sofa" story, so spent most of the day working on random projects instead.  The "random" stuff is all in one file. Earlier this year, I filled a single document with a ton of writing prompts, with the idea being that during NaNo I could avoid writers block entirely, because I'd just drop down to the next prompt once I'd run dry on the current one. There are over 500 prompts in the file, so there's plenty to keep me occupied.  Unfortunately, this file's not working out quite as well as I'd hoped. I'm getting the words down but I'm not convinced any of them will be useful enough to be turned into finished stuff ready for publication. Also, I have to be quite awake to be able to write all these random pieces. Instead of being motivated by a new writing prompt, my sleepy brain is just saying "um, dunno" to most of them, which isn't the idea at all! Anyway, words got done, so I guess that's all that really matters for NaNo. I'll inspect the damage in December to see what's salvageable!  Today gave me 3,088 new words, which means the NaNo total is now 29,560. Looking forward to hitting 30k tomorrow!
8th-12th Nov	40,024
It's been a right old few days of madness! What with one thing and another (translation: "life getting in the way"), I've really been struggling to get the words done. Every night I've reached 10 or 11pm and had to rush to the keyboard for some panicky typing. It's a silly way to work and I really should have just given myself a break... but somehow I've got it in my head that I have to aim for at least 1,667 words every day. Word counts for 8-12th Nov were 1,747, 2,004, 1,671, 1,908 and 3,134 which means I've hit 40k at last. Grand total is 40,024 and I'm currently having daft thoughts of forcing myself to 50k all in one day tomorrow, which is a terrible idea and will almost certainly be ignored.
13th Nov	41,775
I knew today was going to be a busy day, so attacked the word count early... and I have to say: WORD SPRINTS ARE AMAZING! Two 15-minute sprints (apparently my brain is capable of concentrating that long!) gave me 800-ish words apiece, so in just half an hour of work I had 1,751 sparkly new words! Okay, full disclosure... they weren't particularly sparkly. In fact they're a horrible mess. But they are NEW WORDS! And, because I'm a masochist, I attacked a new scene today (one that I had no idea how to write - and have been worrying about for quite a while) and guess what... it worked! Typing super-fast forced my brain to give me ideas, so I've now written all the way through the tricky bit and have come out the other side with no injuries (apart from possibly dying of shock). Current word count is now 41,775 and I still have the idea in my head that I could go crazy tomorrow and force myself to race to 50k. Shush, brain. Stop suggesting silly things please.
14th Nov	[updating soon!]
[updating soon!]

Brain-Stanleys

No one knows what a Brain-Stanley looks like,
but this is probably pretty close

When freewriting, it's important to ignore the internal editor. However, the enforced word count on NaNoWriMo results in the writer-brain making some truly dumb decisions, all in the name of trying to squeeze a few more words into what you've actually written.

Some of the more obvious examples of this are things like always writing "Mr Ian Woon" instead of just "Ian", or not using contractions (e.g. always putting "I am" instead of "I'm"). Helpful for the initial word count, I guess, but really kinda useless in the long run.

But the writer-brain finds far dumber things to do - things that actually get in the way of freewriting. Take this for example:

She nodded for me to continue.

That's the line I was going to write. It's not amazing prose but it's perfectly acceptable, especially in a first draft. Anyway, it popped into my brain and my fingers obediently hammered at the keyboard. But as I typed the last word, a little piece of my brain woke up. For the sake of this explanation, let's call him Stanley. And remember, Brain-Stanley is a baddie in this story.

Stanley said, "Hey, if you type 'go on' instead of 'continue' then you get ONE EXTRA WORD."

The rest of my brain replied, "Oh come on, Stanley. Don't be a tit. What's the point of one extra word? Why can't I just put 'continue'?"

Stanley didn't care that the rest of the brain had just called him a tit. He stood there, with his tiny brain-hands on his tiny brain-hips, and said, "Because it's NaNoWriMo, you daft sod. We need all the words we can get."

There was a little bit of shouting, but Stanley won in the end. The line became:

She nodded for me to go on.

.... and I gained that one extra word.

So now I was a step closer to the end of my million words project. Hooray and hurrah?

No.

This is a worrying trend. If my internal-editor-dialogue ("ooh, we shouldn't write it THAT way; we should write it THIS way") is too loud, then creativity stops dead. The moment my various Brain-Stanleys wake up and start shouting editing suggestions, that's the moment I start struggling to freewrite. And all this 'second guessing myself' is what slows things down. It's hard enough to produce 2,000 words per day, let alone with a bunch of Brain-Stanleys shouting at me.

Dear Brain-Stanleys, I appreciate the occasional extra words, but they're really not worth the internal dialogue distraction. Shush for a few weeks, okay? Please? Pretty please with chocolate cherries?

A million words in 2016 (intro)

I took part in NaNoWriMo in November 2015, and it went really well. Thirty days of hard graft gave me a word count of 137,271. I'd have danced around the room in excitement if I hadn't been nursing my poor aching typing fingers.

But then December happened. Did I carry on writing? No, I bloody didn't. The thing is, NaNoWriMo is a great event but I think a lot of people feel pretty drained afterwards. I certainly did. However I reckon I'd have carried on if I'd still had some form of motivation.

Motivation to write - that's the real beauty of NaNoWriMo. If you're looking in the right places, the world seems to explode with positivity and joy. Writers are suddenly everywhere, galvanizing each other to keep writing, keep writing, keep writing... There are groups meeting all over the world, both in person and online. There are facebook pages and twitter feeds and a thousand other places to find encouragement.

In particular, there's the NaNoWriMo site with that wonderfully motivating graph! God I loved that graph. It seemed to drag me up the mountain by the throat.

And then suddenly it's December. The virtual cheerleaders disappear, and you find yourself just sitting there with your (probably awful) first draft of a novel. It's not surprising that quite a few NaNo manuscripts end up languishing in the darkest depths of a hard drive :-(

So I needed a new project. And here it is: A friend said he's going to write a million words in 2016, so I'm copying him! (Copying his idea, not his words.) It's a crazy task and maybe I'll fail horribly, but at the very least it'll get me writing. If all goes according to plan, I'll end the year having written at least 10 novels (i.e. 10 x 100,000 words). Admittedly they'll mostly be in first draft form, but that'll still be quite an awesome achievement.

To be fair to the NaNoWriMo organisers, they have lots of events to help with the "I wrote a novel! ...Now what?" question. That all happens in January and February, so fingers crossed it'll help me get my editing started.

In 2016, with any luck, I'll write, write, write all day long... and then spend my evenings editing my dodgy first draft from NaNoWriMo. Isn't that the sort of thing "proper" authors do? :-)

Progress Diary (the links will go live as 2016 ticks on)

• January
• February
• March
• April
• May
• June
• July
• August
• September
• October
• November
• December

NaNoWriMo... complete!

All participants HAVE to write a blog post about their NaNoWriMo experience. It's the law! Isn't it? Yeah, it must be. No one will read it, but here goes anyway!

Final NaNoWriMo graph

First of all, I am really going to miss this graph! If you register on the NaNoWriMo site, then you can enter your word count each day and there's a graph that will show your progress. The brown bars show how many words you've done so far, and the grey line is your "par" line for the 50,000 word target.

And this graph is amazing!

For me, anyway, it was easily the strongest NaNoWriMo motivator (aka "tyrant"). If the bar graph was under the par line then I felt terrible! When I finally managed to get above the par line, it seemed to push me on.

If you feel the urge (!) you can click here to see my profile live on the NaNoWriMo site ... and if you're registered on the site then please do add me as a "buddy" - we all need more buddies! :-)


NaNoWriMo diary

This diary's just here for my own record. You're very welcome to read it if you wish, of course! :-)

13th Oct	4,583
I've written a few tests to try out some ideas. And everything seems okay so far, which means I've already got a manuscript word count of 4,583 words! Also, I've realised something: planning the novel has set my brain working, and so it feels dumb to wait for 1st Nov. After all, why would I stop myself writing when Brain is telling me it wants to write? I think I'll just crack on! :-)
15th-16th Oct	14,654
I did a test to see if I could manage to sit down and hammer out the requisite 1,667 words in a day. Two hours later, I'd added another 2,433 words to my manuscript and was feeling pretty pleased with myself! Nipped out to see Bumblywumbly Clunkersnatch in Hamlet ('twas good!), and then came home itching to push my day's total just a little higher. I really wanted to reach 2,500!  Big mistake.  Started just before midnight and kinda got lost in the writing. Being the wally that I am, I didn't stop until I realised my hands weren't responding any more. My wrists were literally collapsing on the keyboard. That was about 5:30am. Having struggled with M.E. for the last couple of years, this was a pretty dumb thing to do. So anyway, the word count is great (10,071)... but the late night completely wiped me out the next day and I got nothing done. D’oh. But it’s all good, because I'm really just testing to see what might go wrong in November. Lesson learned: remember to stop!
19th Oct	25,460
More words today! I'm starting to worry I'm shooting myself in the foot because by the time I hit November, I might have run out of ideas! Ah well, at least I'm writing. Part of today was also taken up with a bit of (gulp!) programming. I wrote a VBA macro to calculate the word count of all my chapters so far. And - get this - it only counts the chapters! This means I can now safely have a ton of notes at the bottom of the file (things like "ideas", "chapter plans", "offcuts", and "rejects") without accidentally counting them towards the word count of the actual novel. Is that helpful? It feels helpful. Is it confusing? Maybe. But anyway, it's done! I also managed to write a bit more. Not sure how long it took, but I had a really good day and produced another 12,599 words! However, that's including the notes, and from now on I'm ignoring the note sections at the bottom of the file... so if I remove the notes then the total novel-only word count today is 10,806. This means my current total is officially 25,460 words. Yay! *feeling pleased* :-)
20th Oct	28,127
Was away for a couple of days so thought I'd get nothing done, but did okay in the end. Me and my laptop found a quiet corner of Tooting Library. Two hours resulted in 2,667 words, so the novel total is now 28,127.
23rd Oct	31,870
Another successful day. Managed 3,743 words, which gives me a total of 31,870.
24th Oct	34,277
Another experiment: I tried writing in the morning! Brain never seems to wake up properly until the evening, so I wasn't feeling overly confident. And, as expected, it was like wringing blood from the proverbial stone. Have to admit though, I eventually did get going. The result was 2,407 words, giving me a total of 34,277.
25th Oct	39,473
Head was just not in the right place today... but I forced myself to keep typing and (just like yesterday) managed to (eventually) get going. Another 5,196 words! Total is now 39,473.
1st Nov	41,645
I think there's something about the concept of "and now you HAVE to do it" that kills the creative part of my brain! It was a real struggle today but I didn't want to miss the 1,667-word target on the very first day of NaNoWriMo! Final result was 2,172 words, giving me a total of 41,645.
2nd Nov	43,937
Another struggle, but a long break in the middle seemed to help. Managed to limp up to the 1,667 target in the morning session, then came back to it in the evening and pushed a little further, resulting in a daily total of 2,292. Total is now 43,937 words.
3rd Nov	43,937
Aargh, no words today! Had a bit of a blip! Got a bit sidetracked by a looming deadline on a flash fiction piece. In the end, the flash fic turned into a short story and kinda took over the day... so I managed to write 2,318 words, but none of them count towards NaNoWriMo, which means my total's still 43,937. Hey, at least I'm writing! :-) However, the NaNoWriMo site is extremely unforgiving: it now tells me I'm not due to finish my 50,000 words until 15th Dec! Oops!
4th Nov	46,720
Definitely feeling like the fun has been taken away from writing! I guess that's probably thanks to the pressure of knowing I have to hit 1,667 words per day. It's not a huge target, but there's something about knowing it's there which makes the creative side of my brain hide under a toadstool. Perhaps it's the difference between looking up at the top of the mountain versus looking down and concentrating on the next step. Anyway, I did get going eventually - admittedly via a lot of procrastination - and today's total was 2,783. Novel total is now 46,720 words.
5th Nov	54,544
Staying up all night destroys the next day but it really helps with the word count. Wrote from midnight all the way through to 6 a.m. and managed another 7,824 words. That means I've officially managed to hit 50k words in less than 30 days - woohoo! Shame the words written before November don't count towards the official NaNoWriMo total. Anyway, the novel is now 54,544 words long, and I'm back on track after my blip :-)
6th-7th Nov	55,473
The problem with an all-nighter is nothing gets done the next day! Or, apparently, the day after. Nov 6th and 7th have been two very "bitty" days - giving me 489 and 440 words respectively - so the total's now 55,473. And as a random point of interest, this means I've written exactly 16,000 words in November.
8th-9th Nov	56,590
A scrappy couple of days but I have an excuse: I was away! Managed 818 words on the Sunday before heading off, and then 299 very sleepy words on the Monday after getting back, giving me a total of 56,590.
10th Nov	58,738
Woke up feeling quite low because NaNoWriMo seems to be a bit of an uphill struggle. Pushed myself to crack on, however, and managed a very respectable 2,148 words! The total's now 58,738.
11th Nov	60,925
Another 2,187 words means I've now written 21,452 words in November (i.e. that's my "official" NaNoWriMo total). The actual novel was started in October and is now 60,925 words long. I'm trying to feel pleased about the word count, but Brain is rebelling! It's telling me I'm barely even halfway through my plot, so there's hell of a long way to go! Anyway, am trying to stay positive. Also managed 1,000 words on a first draft of a short story today, so that's a bonus!
12th-13th Nov	67,417
A successful couple of days gave me word counts of 4,257 and 2,235 respectively, which brings me to 67,417 words. My November words (the tally shown on the NaNoWriMo graph) is 27,944, which means I'm now more than halfway to winning NaNoWriMo! Unfortunately this whole exercise has made me realise that I'm not motivated by word count... I'd much rather aim to get the novel finished by the end of November (i.e. get the whole plot written, regardless of word count). So my actual target is "the whole book" ... yikes.
14th Nov	77,284
Today was one of the Swindon NaNoWriMo "write-in" days where we all meet up in Swindon Central Library to chat and motivate each other... as well as (hopefully) drive up the word count. Unfortunately, Brain finds it hard to work in a chatty environment (silly, unsociable Brain!) so I ignored the novel for most of today and just enjoyed the social. It's great meeting more writers - Swindon seems to be full of 'em! In the end I got about 3,000 words done during the write-in, and then I stuck around in the library for a few hours and managed another 3k. Feeling flushed with success, I carried on at home. Final total for the day was 9,867 words, which means my NaNoWriMo total's now 37,811 and my "novel total" is 77,284. I'm still not finding this easy... which, I admit, has come as a massive disappointment because I was naively hoping for a magical moment where I realise this all just comes naturally and writing for a living will be a breeze. However I am proving to myself that I can rack up the words when I need to. It's just a shame I still seem to be dropping into my usual habit of working in fits and starts (i.e. not much gets done for a few days and then - bang! - I have a hugely successful day to make up for the bad ones). I was hoping NaNoWriMo would help me develop a sane writing habit (one where I sit down each day and carefully knock out a few pages without too much stress) but that doesn't seem to be happening. Oh well. I guess Brain will work the way it wants :-)
15th Nov	88,156
It seems my best writing time is officially between midnight and 3 AM. Ouch. Feel pretty awful after all these late nights, but the word count's going up very nicely. Spurred on by yesterday's success, I managed another 10,872 words. Am really close to "winning" NaNoWriMo (less than 3k to go!), and the novel total's now 88,156.
16th-18th Nov	105,028
Being in sight of the finish line made me stay up late for several nights in a row. And when I say late, I mean that I saw 4 AM each time. Am now absolutely knackered, but have definitely been doing well at drumming out the words. Three very productive days gave me 5,227, 6,813, and 4,832 words respectively, so the NaNoWriMo total is now 65,555 and the novel total is 105,028.
19th Nov	108,574
Another 3,546 words has me at 69,101 (NaNoWriMo) and 108,574 (full total). Feels like things are starting to slow down. Lots of scenes have been written out of order, so I'm now trying to join them up. Sometimes this is easy - just a couple of lines do the job - and other times there's some major hacking to be done. It's all good though - the plot seems to have gelled in my brain and the story actually comes full circle... so hopefully when I start editing I'll be able to produce a decent book!
20th Nov	111,152
The NaNoWriMo site allowed validations today, so my green progress bar on the site is now pink. Achievements don't get much more exciting than that! :-) Did another 2,578 words today, so the totals are now 71,679 (NaNoWriMo) and 111,152 (full manuscript). I'd like to reach 100k on the NaNoWriMo graph, but I'm pretty knackered and am definitely slowing down. Am considering starting a different project... after all, there's no NaNoWriMo rule that says you can only write one story in November.
21st Nov	115,281
Tonight was the "Night of Daring Words" - a NaNoWriMo writers' gathering that involved fancy dress, lots of manic typing, and far too many naughty snacks. Forgot my headphones yet again (so found it hard to concentrate) but managed to knock out 4,129 words which has pushed me over the 75k mark on the all-important NaNoWriMo graph. Word counts are now 75,808 (NaNoWriMo) and 115,281 (full manuscript).
22nd Nov	126,503
Was meant to go out to a pub quiz today but no - it's NaNoWriMo time, and no socials are allowed! Well, they are, but I was on a good run so didn't want to break it. Managed 11,222 words today, so am on 87,030 (NaNoWriMo) and 126,503 (full manuscript). Am pleased with the word count but have realised that, according to my plan, there are *loads* of chapters left to write. The NANoWriMo site has a graph that's very motivating and, once that vanishes (in December), I'm worried I'll lose the will to finish. (Brain is now suggesting I write my own spreadsheet for the task, but I suspect Brain is just coming up with inventive ways for me to procrastinate!)
23rd Nov	130,078
Have broken the 90k barrier on the NaNoWriMo graph! Another 3,575 words takes me to 90,605 (NaNoWriMo) and 130,078 (full manuscript).
24th Nov	134,873
One of the NaNoWriMo challenges is to do some writing somewhere that you probably shouldn't; I think tonight qualifies. Was due to meet a pal at the pub, so I arrived early in order to hammer out my daily word count. But (oh no!) the laptop battery ran out! And could I find a plug to steal a sneaky charge? No, I flipping couldn't :-( But desperate times call for desperate acts, so I sneaked behind the bar (ok, it's a quiet pub so there wasn't too much sneaking involved!) and managed to find a socket. So there I am, standing at the bar, typing away, when the bartender comes over and gives me a funny look. "My back was hurting so I'm just using the bar as a standing work station," I told him, while carefully trying to angle my body to hide the laptop lead. Anyway, I got away with it and managed another 4,795 words. Now at 95,400 (NaNoWriMo) and 134,873 (full manuscript).
25th Nov	138,102
Had a bad day with life swooping in to cause a bit of grief. When that sort of thing happens, the creative part of my brain seems to shut down and it's incredibly difficult to get started again. However, in the end I managed to force another 3,229 words. Bit disappointed as I'd hoped to hit 100k on the NaNoWriMo graph today, but it's all right - I'm nearly there! Final word tally today is 98,629 (NaNoWriMo) and 138,102 (full manuscript).
26th Nov	141,399
The last few chapters are complete! The first chapters are written too! So it seems I'm attacking the middle of the novel in a sort of pincer movement. This could cause problems, but so far it seems okay. Well, there was a slight disaster: I'd planned to kill a character in the middle of the book (no, the weapon of choice was not the traditional NaNoWriMo "shovel of death"), but suddenly realised I'd just written about him being alive in the final few chapters. So he was going to be alive, then get killed, then be alive again. Oops. But it's a happy accident - the plot works better if he survives! So all is well: my not-getting-killed character breathes a sigh of relief (not a huge one though as he now gets horribly scarred instead of killed), and I'm ploughing on with the writing! :-) Today's word count was 3,297, which means the totals are 101,926 (NaNoWriMo) and 141,399 (full manuscript).
27th-29th Nov	156,393
Blimey, the final few days of November are just seeming to vanish. Word counts for 27th-29th were 5,222, 6,302 and 3,470... which has me heading into the last day with word counts of 116,920 (NaNoWriMo) and 156,393 (full manuscript).
30th Nov	176,744
Was hoping to hit 120k on the NaNoWriMo site graph, so I tried the "tell the world your plans" technique (i.e. "Hey world, I'm going to do X today"). Apparently the fear of having to admit that you failed is, allegedly, a great motivator! Here's what I put out there: Apparently you're more likely to get stuff done if you tell the world you're going to do it. So here goes: Dear Facebook (aka "The World"), Today is the last day of NaNoWriMo and I'm going to write 4,000 words. I will not look at any cute kitten videos. Love and hugs, Mark xx So I said I was going to write 4k words... but actually had a brilliant run (seriously - I'm so chuffed!) and hit a personal best of 20k words in a single day :-) Pretty much wrote all day long and forgot to eat! Managed to do 20,351 words, and so the final NaNoWriMo word count is 137,271. Other random numbers, just for the record: Full manuscript is now 176,744 and the total word count of the whole document (including notes) is 185,623. I like Microsoft Word as an editor, but it's amusing to watch it struggle now the document has reached this size :-)

... and just for completeness, here's the actual word count figures from the NaNoWriMo site. Fascinating, eh? :-)

Word counts for 2015 NaNoWriMo

The story isn't quite finished, but there's only a few more chapters to write, and all of them occur in the middle of the book. I'm planning to relax for a few days (need to catch up on sleep!) and then finish the first draft. After that, I'll do a quick tidy-up edit before Christmas, then let the manuscript hibernate for a week or two... with the idea being that I'll come back to it with fresh eyes in the new year.

I've heard that quite a few NaNoWriMo novels get put aside and forgotten about... and this seems such a shame after sooooo much work! I'm determined not to fall into that trap! Things are quite manic at home at the moment (various health issues; selling the house; moving home etc.) but I'm going to get this book edited down to 90,000 words by March. There. I said it. It has to happen! :-)

NaNoWriMo book cover

A scary, scary, scary lady

I found a placeholder cover for my ‪NaNoWriMo‬ attempt!

Until December there will be be no more happy little dragons sitting on shoulders!

This book is going to be freaky and (hopefully) a bit scary!

The image is just grabbed off the web. I can't find the source, and so certainly can't use it for a proper book cover... but it's nice to have it in mind as it should help keep me motivated!

NaNoWriMo, here I come!

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is an annual international event. The idea is to write 50,000 words in the 30 days of November, which gives an average daily aim of 1,667 words per day.

To help me focus, I've signed up for a couple of support groups:

The first is a class run by the talented Jill Sharp at Swindon's Richard Jefferies Museum. There we'll be talking about novel plans (character profiles, outlines - that sort of thing) while also supporting each other as we attempt to make writing a priority throughout the whole of November.

Secondly, I've joined the local NaNoWriMo gang who consist of randoms (like me) along with lots of members of Swindon Free Writers (who are a writing group in Swindon that I've been meaning to join for some time). This group will be meeting in Swindon Central Library throughout November for useful things like writing sessions, mutual support and jelly babies.

I think I'll be okay for word count (I once tried the "write during every spare possible minute" game, and managed to produce 87,923 words in 17 days - go me!) but the main thing for me is going to be trying to write every single day. I often hear of this mystical "writing habit" that apparently every other writer has... and I've yet to achieve it!