50%

After 8 and a bit days, I have hit the halfway milestone - I now have 25,052 words! This has been a fairly crazy week, with furious typing occupying every free moment I've had, but I've absolutely loved it. Blogging has suffered a bit, but I think that's only natural.

This has been a real learning experience for me, and I've found it rather liberating. I'm such a scientist, I like being really accurate, but I've made myself set this story in fictional places so that isn't such a thing as accurate - they're all only in my head. I can go back and change things later if I decide to do things differently, but for the first draft it's much more important to just get the words down.

Right, I need some coffee, and then it's back to the grindstone!

Name change?

After this weekend of frantic activity (12,258 words so far, and I think I've got a few left in me before bed), my 'lazy' credentials are severely tarnished. If this continues, I may have to rename the blog, but 'hard-working perfectionist' just sounds rather dull, and not at all like me. Oh well, I'm sure when I get back into the office tomorrow, my momentum will falter, but with a start like this I don't really have any excuse for not finishing the 50,000 words this year!

Reward

Having already exceeded my target for the weekend (I'm at 11,082 words now!), I'm off to the pub for a well-deserved lunch.

More writing when I get back, and I'm hoping my characters will lead me to write even more unexpected things, following the creation of a feminist fairy-tale earlier today, which my main character told her daughter as a bedtime story!

Day 1 total

I had a good day yesterday. I think I've broken my previous record for number of words written in a day quite easily, and don't entirely know if I can keep up the momentum. But I can only try.

My total for the day was:

8,215 words!

Progress

So far, 291 words, but I've just had to shut Word down for some updates to install. Annoying! But, security is important... And this is a good excuse to go and make a cup of coffee!

And they're off!

I am just about to start NaNo. All my preparation have been made, and I'm raring to go. My nails are short for ease of typing, all the books I might need for reference are around me, and Word is opening up as I type. I also have a big pile of fruit for when it's going well and I'm feeling virtuous, and a big pile of junk food, which I probably won't need for the bad times... I also have a big keyboard hooked up to my laptop to save my wrists.

So, without further ado, 'Once upon a time...'

D'oh!

I've just realised that the books I've been looking forward to receiving from Amazon won't actually ever arrive.

I only dreamt that I ordered them.

(Realisation occurred 5 hours after waking up...)