Restart

I've decided to restart my NaNoWriMo story. It's gutting in terms of wordcount but in terms of where I can go with it, it has more potential. My first story was just a run-of-the-mill, set in modern time novel. The new one is fantasy. Although a part of me feels like I'm selling out, fantasy has a lot more flexibility as you can write by your on rules. And let's face it, it's probably never going to be published anyway.

However, today I've made a lot of progress. I hope to go to bed at midnight, so I'm going to get a hot chocolate, and hopefully write another 1000 words. If I keep up at this rate, I'll soon be back on track. Sorry if I've made mistakes, NaNoWriMo doesn't allow for editting, and moreover, my eyes are actually aching.

Word count today: 2055 (in just over an hour!)
Word count so far: 2055
How many words I'm behind by: 2946

It has begun

It is currently 2:30 in the morning. I awoke at 1 am and have typed furiously, well quite quickly, for the last one and a half hours. I have reached 1696 words of my 50000 word target. That is thirty words over the daily target. However, that doesn't mean I shall rest on my laurels. I am going to try and cushion myself for the busy week ahead.

It has to be said, though, it is pure drivel. It is a good job that it isn't NobPriWinBoWriMo (which is obviously Nobel Prize Winning Book Writing Month) because I would so be on the fail now.

One brilliant resource, for those NaNoWriMoers out there is Write or Die. What you do is set how many words you want to write, let's say 500 in 15 minutes, and then type until you've reached this point. If you stop typing for any length of time bad things happen to you and your family. Well, no, the screen goes red and if you have it on Kamikaze mode, your work will disappear.

So this is it.
Written today: 1696
Written so far: 1696

This little piggy went to the New Forest...

Today I went on a search for piggies, armed with my camera. So I walked deep into the dark, terrible woods in order to find the odd Tamworth or old spot. I got to Bartley Water, a river that runs to Eling. If that means anything to you, hurrah. If not, Wikipedia it. I got to the river, and low and behold there was a pig. However, it was on the other side. So I ran to the riverbank, found a place to cross. If you had seen me, I think you'd be impressed. I climbed onto a forked tree over the river (which, is a raging torrent, I may add) and swung myself onto the other bank. By that time however, the pig had disappeared. I thought I saw it going deeper into the forest away from the river. However, I couldn't find it. I thought, well it must be around here somewhere, because it'll be eating the acorns. I hazarded a look skywards to discover that all the trees around me were beech. Rats, I thought. So I found some oaks and sat on a fallen tree and waited. About five minutes the group I saw yesterday emerged. However, I didn't get close enough to get good photos, and the forest was too dark for my camera. Especially as the flash startled the really big grumpy one. So I decided that it was a lost cause.

If you click it you may make out the Tamworth and Gloucestershire Old Spot.

Now, I had to recross the torrent. Okay, it's hardly that, I admit. So I found a place where there was a bank of shingle. I threw my bag across and then realised, that it was actually quite a jump. Like six feet. So I decided to wade in. I took my shoes and socks off and rolled up my jeans. I was about to slip delicately into the water when my trainer rolled off the bank and into the water. So what was to be a graceful slide became a bit of a scramble down into the stream.

After all that and no decent photos. Well, I did see two piggies afterwards. It was getting a bit dark so they weren't that good either. I'm sorry to disappoint but I don't know what breed they are. Perhaps a British Lop.

I've also created my NaNoWriMo kit. It has 30 gel pens, 1200 post-it notes, a bouncy ball, a bag of skittles, a bag of lollipops, notepad, modelling clay, a muesli bar, a rubber, pencils, a pencil sharpener, mini crayons, a pair of headphones, ProPlus and Anadin Extra.

NaNoWriMo

I'm afraid. Very afraid. I'm a NaNoWriMo participant this year. What's nanowima? you ask. No, Na-No-Wri-Mo. Get it right. It stands for National Novel Writing Month. Well, it's more international novel writing month, but misnomers make the world go round. The idea is to write 50,000 words in one month. Yes, that's a lot. That's like 1,700 a day. That's like 1.16 words a minute. Or one word every 51.8 seconds. Okay, put like that it doesn't sound a lot.

I hope the paragraph of short simple sentences give a sense of my anxiety, otherwise it's probably just irritating. I feel unprepared. I feel like I should have a storyboard, drawings, maps, collages, notes pouring from every orifice. But I have nothing. However, I'm going to create a NaNoWriMo kit. It will have:

• A notebook
• A variety of pens.
• Tic tacs.
• ProPlus
• Music (I'll compiling a mental-in-both-sense-of-the-word list of different music. Feel good music for the happy scenes, some heart wrenching ones and some poignant. I'm feeling 60s at the moment, so there'll be a lot of that on there)
• A shot gun with a single bullet for those desperate moments
• LSD  so I can trip the light fantastic (for same moments as above)
• Chocolate.
• Snack a Jacks. As I won't be sleeping much I'll be constantly hungry so need to watch my weight. Snack a Jack never have me coming back for more. Yuck.
• Post-it notes. Shaped like pandas
• Some sort of stress toy. Shaped like a panda.
• A pencil sharpener/post-it shredder, shaped like a panda.

That's the extent to my NaNoWriMo kit at the moment. If you have any suggestions you have one week. Remember it starts on the 1st November. If you want more info go to nanowrimo.org.

Left Holding the Baby

Today someone handed me their child. It was a small child, also refered to, so I'm led to believe, as a baby. What went through my mind was, "Okay, I can do this, it'll only be for a minute or so." Ten minutes these reckless parents intrusted their child's life to my hands. Ten minutes. My thoughts quickly progressed to, "babies die. Babies die at the hands of incompetent people. I am an incompetent person." Seriously, don't trust me with your child. He was quite cute though and did the whole gripping of the finger and gurgled at me.



Next month, two weeks today is November, and November is NaNoWriMo. What's that? It's National Novel Writing Month. The aim is to write a 50,000 word novel between 1st-30th November. It doesn't have to be good, or well written it just has to exist. So I'm preparing for that. I'm going to set up my desk as a NaNoWriMo corner and have a stash of sweets, proplus, notebooks, and my laptop. I'll keep you updated on how I do.