NaNoWriMo 2010

Who's in?

Post your wordcounts, compare your stats, your plot bugs and fixes and other ridiculousness here...

When is "write album" month?

now

Yeah, same month. As is videoblog month as well (I have a friend who's trying to do all three, which is madness.)

NaSoAlMo 2010

Dang, I keep thinking "I shoudld at least write those damn songs down I have only in my hed" and then think "oh, I'll do it when that month comes around" then forget it's ALWAYS NOVEMBER!

Videoblog month? blimey.

I meant to actually ask her about it, like, is the point of it that you try to make a full film in a month? (speaking of impossible) but I think it's the same kind of idea, but transfered to the video medium. I don't know.

I've written c. 1600 words, all on Monday. Should get more done from tomorrow, when metaphorical decks are a bit clearer.

Did I mention I'm at 8962 as of last night?

Thing is, I have *never* had a problem just spewing out reams and reams of verbiosity. My problem with writing is always trying to edit down my prose and contain my natural tendencies to ramble, and chop out non plot related stuff. So NaNoWriMo really exagerates mine own worst tendencies.

The other problem is, I've had, erm... input ... today ... which makes me want to completely rewrite an entire character and indeed vast chunks of my story. And 4 days in, this isn't totally unrealistic, but it would be a bit of a hassle. And I'm not actually sure the story would work.

You are deviating from the true path if you revise anything or let anyone see anything before you finish.

Well, when that "thing" demanding the revising is my libido, I tend to listen to it, because, really, my id is what drives the whole damn thing, so I kinda of pander to it when it screams it wants a particularly toothsome sweetie.

Oh well, no rewrite, just retrofit.

Yeah, introduce a new character, maybe? 8k out of 50k doesn't seem like a terrible time for an introduction? (I'm guessing it's mister maths geek, right? Hehehe.)

I'm only 1k in, but might be able to get some more done before the gig tonight.

Thi is turning into 3k short stories with one sentence-segues in between.

It's not so much a new character insertion as changing one of the major characters to be someone quite different from who he is.

Well, without trying to give away too much of the plot, I'm trying to write a kind of literary detective story, whereby a modern academic is trying to prove the authorship of some anonymous works written 80 years before. His number one suspect is a surrealist painter in Paris. (the twist ending is that, even though he is the obvious candidate, he realy isn't, because the whole story is about how the works of creative women are just subsumed into their male counterparts.) However, it would provide a completely different *twist* on the story if this suspect wasn't a surrealist painter at all, but a French maths professor! Like, that would completely change *everything* because it would be way more o_0 that a maths professor had written an anonymous work of literature than a surrealist painter. But I'm really not sure if that whole change works or not. Because part of the whole thing of her work being coopted into hers is that *he* is believable as an author. Which I don't think a geeky maths professor really would be, given the nature of the anonymous literature.

God this story sounds ridiculous and pretentious when I try to explain it. Which is why I try not to explain the plot of stories while I'm writing them because it makes me want to give up.

No, that sounds like a cool story. But I think I agree with your doubts - a surrealist painter is definitely more of a candidate for an anonymous work of literature than a maths professor. Could you maybe have the maths professor as a bluff before the real twist arrives?

Maybe next year. Last year, in retrospect, would have been a great time to have done this. But I had been laid off on October 27th from my old job and working on this instead of cranking out resumes seemed pretty stupid.

I did finish this back in 2006 though.

Maybe I'm mercenary, and maybe I'm the wrong person to do this, but if I was putting that much effort into doing something like this, I'd like a big pile of money potentially at the end. It wouldn't have to be a certainty, but something like a speculation would do me. The idea of writing a large amount of words for a nov for pure pleasure doesn't quite cut it enough for me.

Thanks. And yeah, that's a good idea actually. Because it means I can have another red herring before the twist turns up (I'm trying to put it off as long as possible, mainly by the fact that the definitive proof that it was ladypainter and not blokepainter is in her schoolgirl's diary which is written in Classical Greek so that the nuns at her school will not be able to read the dirty bits if found, and Researcher/Narrator has to send it off to another academic to get it translated.)

HOWEVER I now have the additional problem of how the hell am I going to get a respectable though foppish brilliant maths professor to start hanging out on the Left Bank with a bunch of degenerate painters, pornographers and philosophers? Like, ladypainter's salons are supposed to be great fun - what would a maths professor being doing at one?

I suppose I could make him this sort of popularly celebrated and feted Einstein figure who all the surrealists would love to hang out with because he's bending notions of space and time in a way that they want to play with in their work... WAH-HEY actually that works. Yay, ILX, you have solved my plot problems! Thank you!

(of course, if ladypainter starts sleeping with mathsprof like you know will happen, that makes ROMANTIC ENTANGLEMENT PROBLEMS oh my.)

The idea of writing a large amount of words for a nov for pure pleasure doesn't quite cut it enough for me.

What, unlike the idea of being in a band for pure pleasure, or recording a bunch of music for pure pleasure?

Writing at this kind of frenetic pace and not having to edit or censor or second guess yourself is way way waaaaayyyy fun. I couldn't do this if I thought it was a real Thing that I'd be judged on or paid on.

what would a maths professor being doing at one?

Visiting his sister, maybe?

Nooo, I've already got creepy cousin incest, don't bring siblings into this.

Yay! There have definitely been scientists etc who have espoused theories of the universe that appeal to the mystic/transcendent side of the art world. Is ladypainter based on Carrington at all?

I keep trying to tell myself that if I can get through it despite all the cliche and repetition (every session I have a few words that seem to sneak into each sentence - it's very annoying) I will at least have 50k of plot and ideas that I can go back and work on. But I still quaver over each word choice.

xpost Funny, one time our Amber had to come up with a piece of writing that had to fulfil a number of criteria: A biography, dates for marriages/births, significant events, and had to be written in 45 mins. So, I sat and wrote one while she wrote hers.

And, as you say, didn't censor myself or re-write any of it, just scribbled like mad within the parameters, and came up with something I can't recall at all now, but I was quite pleased with.

I suppose it's more I'd like the time to do something properly if I was going to.

I do remember some famous person recently saying that all those people who claim they could do brilliant things if only they had time in their lives weren't trying hard enough. Except this person didn't have kids, etc, and their main occupation was something that contributed towards the 'brilliance' of his output. Hmm, who was it I wonder? (ans on a postcard)...

re: mystery writer novel
are you taking requests, though?
i just read a little blurb about eric gill, the inventor of gill sans font. what a strange and deviant character -- and maybe perfect identity your mystery writer.

if he's anything like my maths teachers at 1pm he'd be drinking and playing poker in the little maths department staff room

about 3k in - haven't had time the past two days because my mother is an unreliable drunk and i had to take over her babysitting duties. gonna try and do 2k tomorrow/sat and then 4k sunday (unless the football is on, and then another 2k - the 4k binge can wait for monday. and be a 5k binge.)

shock horror its about wrestling. it would have been so cool and original if that mickey rourke film i've still not seen didn't come out. oh well, i presume thats not built on the hilarious fucked up mythology of it all. already got a dead body, massive steroid+drug abuse, gay fucking & stds in my 3k and the next chapter is gonna be p rapey.

Good call on the Carrington spot - she was definitely one of the people I was thinking of when I imagined my ladypainter.

Eric Gill, for all his aesthetic brilliance, is just way too creepy for me to even get into. So no, sorry, no requests.

Anyway, I know *exactly* who the mystery author is, it's ladypainter, but because she was the partner (bed and art) of blokepainter, she was automatically just assumed to be the "muse" rather than an equal and potent part of the partnership (and the one who wrote the books, entirely, herself.)

And actually, Emil.y I should know that, from having recently read Techgnosis, the number of physicists and scientists who have ideas that translate wonderfully into mystic/transcendant sides of the universe that would appeal to surrealists.

It really is just a case of sitting down and hammering it out. And it's been wonderful for my evenings, in that dead time between dinner and bed when otherwise I'd just be sitting around idly surfing and talking rubbish on ILX. I've been totally helped by how utterly shite my interweb connection is at home, actually, blessing in disguise.

Thi is turning into 3k short stories with one sentence-segues in between.

like plenty of real published novels.

Maybe I'm mercenary, and maybe I'm the wrong person to do this, but if I was putting that much effort into doing something like this, I'd like a big pile of money potentially at the end. It wouldn't have to be a certainty, but something like a speculation would do me. The idea of writing a large amount of words for a nov for pure pleasure doesn't quite cut it enough for me.

yeah but. Suppose you have any kind of aspiration to maybe at some point in your life write novels or somesuch. You will never actually do this if you do not start writing at some point. And you probably will have to write a lot of crap before you get to the point of writing good stuff. So NNWN is a great way of churning out the crap, and of getting practice at writing, and at getting practice at writing quickly.

I also think that planning NNWN novels in advance is kind of cheating.

It's like the P90X workout for writing. You follow a regiment, complete it, and notice results.

if anyone is stuck for novel ideas i have many many aborted ones.

What do you mean by "planning" though?

Like, obviously, I think it's against the spirit if not the rules to commit anything to paper/word processor before 1st November (synopsis, character sketches, flowchart, whatever else, anything!) but all novels (well, mine at least) start as odd germs that pop into your head at odd and sometimes quite random times. And you end up kicking these things around and thinking them over and mentally planning at least the story arc before you start writing or else you wouldn't have anything to write!

But this is the first novel I've ever had to write an actual backbone of a timeline before writing it, because of its historical content - but I did not actually work that timeline out until 1st November so I'm quite proud (though unfortunately it doesn't count towards wordcount, sigh.)

this thing seems less about ideation and more about overcoming the drudgery of committing words to paper, which makes me think it wouldn't be against the spirit of the thing if the ideas and even planning came from somewhere else.

4 days in, and I'm over 11000 words. That's a fifth of the way already. Blimey. If I keep up at this rate, I'll be done by the 20th.

Rock and roll.

I suppose what I don't like about pre-planning is that it makes it too likely that your novel will end up being any good. It is quite interesting, though, to see the different ways that people approach NNWN - the closer people are, or think they are, to being real writers the more they tend to approach the thing as a way of writing a proper book quickly. I am more in the quantity not quality camp.

One other thing about all this that strikes me is that the key feature of NNWN - writing novels really quickly - makes humour writing very obviously the way to go with it, as you do not really have the time to work out complicated plots or subtle developments of character. That said, there is nothing worse than unfunny attempts at humour.

omfg its NNWM already!

...and breathe again...

My friend, relax. This is the time to write, without thinking or editing or correcting, but just to get the words out there.

That includes typoons and incorrect acronyms.

sorry, just woke up.

Sorry man, I have really let the side down here.

only got about 500 words done today but have actually started planning/figuring out wtf happens and how and when so it feels like a preductive day.

Not going to get a chance to write today so I'm paranoid that I'm going to blow my early promising start... but I can write all weekend to make up for it. Also, it gives me time to research what wacky edge-of-science theories were current around the late 20s/early 30s...

Hey! What do you know? Dirac's early work totally dates from that exact period. Result!

I enrolled in NaSoLoMiO (or whatever it's called), so...

22251 as of 10 minutes ago. That's just on half done and it's not a week yet.

I've given up and gone for all-out trash. So far today, we've had incest, kiddie pr0n, nude dancing on a piano to the charleston, cousin marriage, rampant bisexuality, implied bestiality, someone losing a finger, an institutionalisation, a corrupt Freudian psychoanalyst seducing his patient (or was that the other wary around?), prostitution (male), prostitution (female), topless dancing to wild flapper jazz, anal sadism, two illegitimate children, bigamy and a laudanum habit. And I've only just got them to Paris and the sexy mathematician dude (called Cedric Cirad in the most flimsy pseudonym ever) hasn't even turned up yet. Hurrah!

This will either be the best novel I've ever written, or the absolute worst. I'm thinking probably the latter.

Dirac --> Cirad reminds me of how Pokemon are named. "Let's call this snake....Ekans." :)

I have no idea what you are talking about, it is a random French name I randomly picked out a quantum hat like a dice-playing god. ;-)

Ekans,arbok,and muc.latter,a puddle,somewhat perturbing.

All this novel is short of is a duel. Perhaps he can have a death-feud with his similarly implausibly attractive physicist rival, Alfred Nietsnie.

Atom smashers at damn!

haven't been keeping up with this, but I have written a few pretty funny passages so far. unfortunately, connecting them turns out to be something of a chore. sometimes I just want to type "[somehow they get from this scene to the next one]" and move on. keep moving, don't get pinned down.

28638 today. I wanted to get to 30,000 today but I got into a massive wiki digression, trying to simultaneously read up on both quantum electrodynamics and surrealism in an attempt to get a timeline that worked for both my painters and my mathematician. I think I've done it, but I fear I'm too burned out now to squeeze out the last 1500 words.

Sometimes typing "[somehow they get from this scene to the next one]" and moving on is actually your best option, especially if you're working to just flesh out ideas as fast as possible. It's something I've luckily learned to discipline myself about - mostly, believe it or not, through so much experience of writing fanfic. Write the bits you want to get down first, then go back and write the doorway interludes. It works, and you get a better idea of how to get from point A to point B once you've got a clearer idea of what point B actually is.

I think I've really cheated on this one by giving myself the easy get out of having the trick of the academic narrator to jump from important passage to passage. The narrator is doing my work for me, coming up with a narrative framework by trying to fit the characters lives to his theories. However, the problem is, that means I sacrifice a huge amount of padding in the form of dialogue, which I can write easily and endlessly. Since my narrator can only really theorise and quote extant diary entries, my dialogue is somewhat limited, which is a new challenge for me. (I am of course completely ignoring this when i want to write a juicy sex scene. I keep second guessing myself, thinking "how on earth would he *know* what they said" then excusing myself saying "oh, ladypainter wrote it all down in her ultrasexxxxy diary.")

^^^this fucking guy

117. I don't know what deluded impulse made me sign up, I knew I wouldn't have time to do this.

I'm only on 3204, but my decks are relatively clear now - so the end of the month could see the world's greatest novel completed.

Next year I'm writing a novel about entering NaNoWriMo and failing to write a novel.

You could do the whole book in the form of posts to an internet messageboard.

I, meanwhile, am wishing that my book was a Richard Allen knock-off about thuggish youth cults in a near-future Ireland of decay and social breakdown.

Have you guys read this shit?
http://www.salon.com/books/laura_miller/2010/11/02/nanowrimo

Hurrah, some extra words to add in to my NaNo word count: pompous, self-absorbed, snobby, killjoy.

Also, by being such a dickhead she makes you associate the people she does champion with her, and thus I now think they're utter wankers too. Well done, you.

I'm sympathetic to the complaint that it does seem to be attracting a lot of energy and press where maybe something like a NaWriteAShortStoryTheFirstWeekThenSpendTheRestOfTheMonthRevisingItUntilIt'sPublicationReady wouldn't.

I mean, not everyone has a great novel in them, but everyone's got a great novella.

laura miller doesn't understand why other people would want to write stuff, when they could be reading the stuff she writes, or else the stuff she reads. This is probably more due to myopia than pomposity.

This is akin to thinking fewer people should be making their own music, since they were obv destined to swell the audiences of professional musicians, instead of singing or plinking out their own wretched tunes.

Abundance of creative work is not a problem for the "beloved readers" but a problem for the publishing industry.

Oh what a pompous arse.

How dare people enjoy their own creativity! They should have it beaten and snarked out of them until they are happy little consumers who never attempt to make or create anything for themselves ever.

As for the poor editors and agents who have to wade their way through extra submissions at the end of November, OH MY HEART FUCKING BLEEDS FOR YOU.

However, for people who think that "writing a novel" is somehow a get-rich-quick scheme HA HA HAHAHAHAHAHAHHA. Deluded fools, they'll learn soon enough.

That said, I do rather agree with distaste towards the entire "creative writing" industry. But that's for another thread. I don't see NaNoWriMo as anything more than a wacky race to the finishing line, a bit of fun, be cool, etc.

People who don't *read* books, however, they kinda scare me.

(But that has nothing to do with whether they try to write one or not.)

out of curiosity, what is it specifically about novels for you guys that holds this attraction to banging one out over all other avenues of written creativity?
i do feel there are a lot of other formats that are getting the short shrift by things like these.

What other formats of written creativity do you mean?

Personally, I can't stand poetry. I'm sure it's fun for others to write but I simply loathe writing it. I never had the discipline to write short stories; I always want to know what happens next & next & next...

...as opposed to me, who personally enjoys both writing and reading poetry, and who owns far and away more books of poetry than novels.

I'm definitely not a poetry person. My ideal would be to write Borges length pieces (preferably of Borges quality, but, you know, that's highly unlikely), as I've always tended to be quite terse/concise/not really able to write a plot (depending on how charitable you would like to be). However, I like the idea of being able to write something properly extended. The fact that I mostly want to write "high art" and am very very self-critical means that the Wacky Races aspect of NaNoWriMo is good for me, as it forces me to practice writing without killing myself over each individual word - I can always go back and revise stuff later. Although I'm not sure it's working, as I'm still only 3k in.

Poetry, Short Stories, Novellas, Articles, Hypertext, Longform Jokes, Narrative cookbooks, Hoaxes, Amazon reviews, alternate history in the form of Wikipedia edits, Typographic stories, flyers, fictional catalogs, infographics, photo-captioning, cheatsheets, graffiti, etc...

Borges is a good example of someone with a lot of ideas of what written creativity can encompass outside of a novel -- where is NaMakeABorgesConceptRealMo?

I wish I had the foresight and humour to carry off a really good hoax, but unfortunately I don't think I have it in me.

Just like everything else, the trick is to believe it yourself.

That article had about 90% halfway decent points.

Still dud though, overall.

"Submitting novels in Nov or Dec?" tweeted one, "Leave NaNoWriMo out of the cover letter ... or make it clear that it was LAST year's NaNo." Another wrote, "Worst queries I ever received as an agent always started with 'I've just finished writing my NaNoWriMo novel and ...'"

Naturally.

how-to manuals for would-be writers. The wife offered him $10,000 on the spot to write one himself. "These kinds of books sell better than the fiction books," she explained.

Funnily enough, I had an idea to write a 'self-help' book called "How to write a damn song", which would be, um, less than serious but reasonably efficacious at the same time.

It's that old thing I've seen in actors I used to know, that whole "oh, people think it's easy to do what we do, but I've been to RADA/trod the boards for 10 years/etc", and to be fair they are entirely right. And, also, wrong. There is such a thing as natural talent, and in 100% of situations a lot of training is needed.

I remember Germaine Greer being all very 'insulted' that someone might actually send Ms Well Read some of their poetry, expecting someone whos read all the classics and lots more to be 'impressed' or something.

I guess the moral of the tale is "Don't be too well read".

It's always a balance, I mean, I don't want to get into digression about that dodgy "10,000 hours of practice" rule but there's a lot to be said for the idea that, even for someone who may be a "natural" genius, it takes a hell of a lot of work to bring it out. And the great thing about NaNoWriMo is the discipline of it, of *having* to write every day. 750words.com functions much the way (though it's a bit of a different horse, as it's easy to get diverted into digressions of diarisation rather than focusing on an actual single work.)

I've had a lot of friends who were Proper Writers over the years, and they were always amazed at my output, because, of course, they were Proper Writers who had been to Writing School or whatever (some of whom went on to get novels published, and some of whom just went on to editorial type jobs where they complained about never getting any Proper Writing done.) Despite the fact I've had utterly no training, the one thing I do is simply sit down and write. If you do *anything* enough, you will eventually get better at it.

Anyway, I'm making Pronouncements now, which I hate.

I seem to, however, lost the ability to sit down and write a damn song. By which, I mean, I have lost the discipline to find the time and sit down with a sequencer or a guitar and write the damn thing. So maybe I need that self help book of yours, Mark G!

By which, I mean, I have lost the discipline to find the time and sit down with a sequencer or a guitar and write the damn thing.

ditto.

So maybe I need that self help book of yours, Mark G!

The old maxim applies (to me, anyway), those that can, do. Those that can't, teach...

I think ~~~~ the problem with music, is I care if anyone listens to it or not. With stories, I don't give a damn if anyone else ever reads it, I write the things to amuse myself more than anything else.

Hell, I couldn't even bring myself to finish my 77 second ILX music piece. Because I had considerably more than 77 seconds, and couldn't be arsed to edit it down.

Where's that thread about Private Art? Is NaNoWriMo Private Art?

I had a couple of pieces, one was exactly 77, one needed a couple of small snips.

So I finally edged over 35000 words today. Second week has really dragged, but I think I've got over the hump and I'm into act two now.

How's everyone else getting on? Finding it a bit of a slog right now, to be honest.

Urgh, not made any progress at all over the last few days. Will try to return to it tomorrow but all dreams of actually making it to the final wordcount are pretty much destroyed.

47139 today. It'd be more if I hadn't stopped to do Tiny Music. So close and yet so far! I've no idea how I'm going to finish given that my two main characters have just died (of old age, actually). I suppose I'm going to have to pad it out with 3000 words of literary theory now my "researcher" has just worked out the secret) but jeez if I could just spit out 3000 words of bullshit art theory on demand, I might have finished LOLcollege.

I've just started reading "How To Suppress Women's Writing" by Joanna Russ (which I probably should have read before I started but on well) so maybe I'll just paraphrase what I learn in that as the researcher feels really dumb he didn't work it out earlier.

Will try to return to it tomorrow but all dreams of actually making it to the final wordcount are pretty much destroyed.

I had a VERY BAD second week, meaning that there is almost no way I can finish, but I am going to keep writing, because it is better to try and fail than just to give up.

One thing that does not help is that I have found myself looking back at my last NaNoWriMo thing and thinknig "this is actually half decent, kind of", unlike the total crap I have produced thus far this year.

Yes! Even 1000 words of NaNoWriMo is better than 0 words of not writing anything! Keep going!

(I actually feel bad because after last year, I put my last NaNo project away and didn't look at it again because I got caught up in a long-term FF project that had, like, readers, demanding the next chapter. But I got it out just before this year started and I thought "despite, or maybe because of the Cthulhu-shagging, this is actually kinda alright. Much better than I remembered.)

ARGH. Help.

I literally have NO IDEA how I am going to write the last 3000 words of my novel. I am actually totally stuck.

Like, I have absolutely no idea how the narrator (who has been writing this story pretty much as a biography with little bits of art/literary criticism) is going to react to the discovery that the author of this piece of work, which he has devoted his entire life to studying, is actually a woman, and what's more, the wife of his subject. The wife that he spent a good part of his paper saying "oh, she was just his muse, she wasn't a very good painter, she was the socialite, he was the hard workers..." - like, does he actually accept this, or does the cognitive dissonance kill him?

I know I should handle this as exemplary of the kind of attitude that kept her authorship hidden for so long, like he goes through all the "she couldn't have!" but I don't think I have enough experience of male academics to know how to write one. (Mainly because, ha, irony of ironies, I fucking hate them.)

OH DRAMA.

have him flatly deny even in the face of insurmountable evidence because it fucks with his thesis statement

That would actually be completely believable. Like, he comes up with ever increasing bizarre theories to justify the idea that it's not ladypainter, it's painterbloke against mounting evidence. I could try to do that.

I can do ideas, I just can't execute them

Argh, Unfortunately, I forgot that I wrote another few hundred words last night where he starts to come to terms with it, but I think I'm going to scrap them (even though he actually quite cleverly figures out that the huge gap in time between two of the folios being written was because they were living in abject poverty, and before they were middle class enough to hire a maid (this being the 20s/30s after all) LADYPAINTER WAS TOO BUSY WASHING PAINTERBLOKE'S SOCKS and cooking dinner for his surrealist dinner parties and cleaning his damn house from morning till night to have the energy write any more lovely stories - because, hey, NO 21ST CENTURY MALE ACADEMIC WOULD EVER ACTUALLY REALISE THAT, WOULD HE? because socks clean themselves and dinner is provided by his nice university. probably.)

DAMN. An actual academic friend of mine has just reminded me that he would have to defend his thesis, even if it was completely batshit deep in denial.

He could get more outrageous with it.

i have figured out how to write at my internship - important imo as i've not really been given anything to do and looking like i am writing an email all day looks better than just straight up writing a novel. That said, this keyboard is hell.

My boss isn't in today. I could potentially write at work.

Hell, I could write at work when he is here and he wouldn't care so long as my work gets done, but I feel a bit funny doing it.

Woot! I took a day off last night to go to a lecture which actually gave me a fabulous idea for a surprise ending.

And now HURRAH!!! PRAISE THE LORD!!! I am over the line at 50,192.

I don't think there's any more plot to be written, but I'm definitely going to have to go back over the rest of the story and tie together some loose ends and pad out bits I now realise are quite important and give more back story to my academic, who has become almost as important as the artists he is studying, in a weird way.

And yeah, after watching Simon Baron-Cohen flat-out deny huge studies and scientific evidence that didn't seem to agree with his ideas last night, it's not so unbelievable at all that an academic would behave like that.

Well done! So you did opt for the denial, then?

I'm now aiming to get to 15,000 words as some sort of nano NaNo, and maybe try to entirely submerge myself in it when I'm at my mum's for Christmas. Had pretty much a week off and that combined with my tortuous writing has definitely scuppered me, though.

I passed the 10K mark last night. This felt like an achievement.

Yay for both of you! if you want to do a nano NaNo rush for 15k words, I will make a microbadge to certify your efforts. ;-)

Rockin. I am getting into it a bit more, but still finding it hard to squeeze out the words. I reckon I will be about 25K of rubbish words by the end.