So I typed these words today.

The end of part two came a bit faster than I thought it would. It leaves me somewhere between a tiny pickle and extreme happiness. I’m only at 43.5 thousand words, leaving me 6.5 thousand short of the NaNoWriMo target. This in itself is not a problem. Book four is ready to go. It doesn’t have a full outline yet, but I know where it starts and I know where it ends. I have some early scenes well-outlined. I don’t foresee any problems with wading straight in.

The problem begins when I try to stop writing at the end of November, which I will have to do, since the end of November heralds the start of December. December is the time for cleaning frantically, watching shitty movies that would cause me to kick my telly in the face at any other time of the year, and pretending that I’m going to make all that Pinteresty stuff. I’m totally going to make all the things this year. So yes, I’m going to start enthusiastically writing a new book later today, then after eleven days, I’m just going to stop. I’m not going to stop, am I? My house will look like Primark on Boxing Day. But it’s okay really, I’ll be way too happy to notice.

 

Got my 25k badge. Partying like it’s 1999. Body telling me I’m not 26 anymore.

Hope you’re all hitting your targets and having fun out there.

I hit 50K on day 18, but couldn’t validate until today, so there you have it. I’m officially a winner.

The very best thing to have come out of this year’s NaNoWriMo is that on most days I’ve been able to ditch my old school ways. I’ve barely written with a pen for the last two weeks. I’ve been typing straight into the PC and it’s been easy enough. I won’t lie and say I’ve written the most brilliant prose ever seen, but it’s no worse than anything that flowed out of my pen.

I had a bit of a strange moment when I realised how different my routine could be. My usual way is to write a few thousand words by hand, type them up at night, then update my word count before midnight. At this point, I would be done for the day and spend the rest of whatever time I had before bed reading trashy historical romances. My new routine is to write straight into the PC, updating my word count often, watching it climb in steady little bursts. I write best late at night, but had previously been using this time for typing, so now I find myself working past midnight, updating before and after. By the time I start writing the next day, I usually have at least a thousand words in the bag, which is an excellent motivation for me.

So this year, because of NaNoWriMo, I’ve changed the habits of a lifetime.

So it’s day 10 and I’ve hit the halfway mark. Twenty five thousand words. Two new characters. Lots of questions to delve into. A ghastly tour around an abandoned mental hospital. Menace on the underground. An unexpected comedy crush. The return of some favourite but relatively unexplored characters. I’m having heaps of fun, especially as I never intended to write a sequel. I didn’t think I’d bury these characters for good, but I didn’t expect them to be getting up to such mischief so soon either.

Obviously if I continue at this rate, I’ll have 75K in the bag by the 30th, but I don’t want to tempt fate so I won’t.

I hope those of you doing NaNoWriMo this year are enjoying yourselves.