NaNoWriMo Endgame

At 16:50 yesterday I completed the first draft of my novel for NaNoWriMo. When it was validated it came to 50,039 words. It was not all plain sailing. The last section was written while I suffered from a very bad flu. Just to complicate matters when I reached about 43,000 words I realised that my outline was going to be useless as a guide to completing the book. I originally thought that the murder mystery plot I was using was going to be a short introduction to the quest adventure. There I was 80% of the way through and the Read more…

Free Stuff for NaNoWriMo

I should have known it was all going to go horribly wrong the moment I got on the plane. It wasn’t just the person on the left of me was snuffling. The person on the right was as well. As was the person in front of me and the person behind. As we took off the sounds of coughing and sneezing drowned out the engines. I could practically feel the cloud of unhealth settle on me. Father Nurgle has blessed me once more. There was not a lot of NaNoWriMoing done last week. As of yesterday I had completed 36522 Read more…

New Toys For NaNoWriMo

So here we are in the second week of NaNoWriMo. Things are going pretty well for me. I hit just over 28000 words yesterday so I am ahead of schedule. I need to be. I am in Scotland this week visiting family. Time is tight. Last week I picked up a new toy, reactivated an old one and learned a few things. The Roost Possibly the most important thing from the point of view of ergonomics was that my Roost laptop stand arrived. This was recommended by excellent SF author and long-time friend Gary Gibson in the comments of this Read more…

NaNoWriMo Day Five

So here we are at the start of Day Five of the month long novel writing project. This is the first of my promised updates on how things are going. I dived headlong into NaNoWriMo at midnight on November 1st. I wrote a quick burst of 750 words and then went to bed. Why did I do this? Because the promo email from the good folks at NaNoWriMo suggested I do so. Apparently I am a sucker for not-so-subliminal suggestions. God alone knows how long it’s been since I tried writing fiction in the wee small hours. Must have been Read more…