After two months

I’ve not done so well with my writing this month.

Part of the point of NaNoWrMo is that as it covers only a month you don’t have time to loose interest and stop.

But here I am at the end of my second month with only 13,998 words written.  Now don’t get me wrong, that is the most I have ever written towards one story and I am pleased.  But I’m about 10,000 words behind.  Not an encouraging thought and not helped by the cold I’ve been struggling with this last week.  I find it very hard to think with my head filled with snot.

But I will keep going.  I am interested to find out what happens to Kate, my main character, and how many words I will manage in the time I’ve given myself.

Sony Ericsson Fitness Experience Pack

Recently I ‘won’ the Sony Ericsson Fitness Experience Pack though the Running4women website where I log all my runs.  The only condition was that I write a review of the pack once I’d used it.  No problem there then.

It is quite exciting to be sent something to write a review about, it’s just a shame that it was so hard to get working.  I’m glad that I hadn’t spent money on it.

You can see my review on the running4women website.

Guildford Book Festival 2011

I hadn’t realised quite how far through the year we were until the Guildford Book Festival programme arrived on my door mat.  Held over the 13-22 October there is plenty to interest everyone whether a workshop on how to improve your writing or a talk by a favourite author.  I’m looking forward to having a proper look though the programme and deciding what to attend.

AA312 Total War and Social Change: Europe 1914 – 1955

AA312 Total War and Social Change: Europe 1914 – 1955.  This is the title of the next Open University course I am going to take.  I am registered and the set books have just arrived from Amazon.

It doesn’t start until next February but I like to be prepared.  This will be my first history course and at level 3 to, so I figured that it wouldn’t hurt to have a read of the set texts before the course starts and get my head used to the idea of studying history instead of literature.  As always it’s a pretty scary idea - another 9 months of studying and a brand new subject this time, but the issues this module covers are just too interesting to ignore.  I hope I still feel like that this time next year when I’ll be getting ready for my first exam in a long time.

After a Month

At the beginning of August I said I was going to try writing 410 words every day for 4 months as my own personal NaNoWrMo, so at the end of August I thought I’d give an update on how I’m doing so far.

Before I began I worked out the word count for every day (the beauty of excel) and set up a spreadsheet with my expected word count, my actual word count, how many words I actually wrote and what my deficit is.

I’ve found this a great motivator for when I’m struggling.  I hate to see a 0 in the ‘what I wrote that day’ column.  It is also pretty horrible to see the deficit numbers climbing.

I’m not managing to write every day, but when I do it is quite often over 400 words which is good.  And by only having to write such a small number every day it gives me time to think about what comes next.  This really is an exercise in getting words down, rather than writing a best selling novel.  I can go back and make it good later, for now I’m just writing.  No editing allowed.  Which means anything in my head goes on the page.  I’ve even got my token Ninja in.  So now I just have to keep the momentum going to hit 50000 by end of November.