You might well think I’m insane to already be considering my next attempt at NaNoWriMo, but it turned out that writing a draft of a novel wasn’t as hard as I expected, especially with the bonus pressure of a deadline and people watching me.
But I also learned a lot from the experience and come November 1 next year, I’ll be doing some things differently. In case I forget these personal pearls of wisdom, I thought I’d make a list:

Plan my novel more. This year, especially because of the spontaneous, last-minute …

Panic over. I’ve finished the first draft of my novel. Not only have I become a NaNoWriMo winner (hence the special icon they gave me on the right), I’ve even managed to fulfill my New Year’s Resolution to write a novel in 2007.
Yay me! There’s a lot more work to be done on this manuscript before even my closest critics can lay eyes on it, but the substance is there. Plus I’ve learned that I’m not as skilled at procrastinating as I thought.
Thanks to everyone who’s been cheering for me …

So, almost a week ago I posted in a panic that I had just a week or so more to get from 21,000 words to 50,000 in this November novel-writing challenge. Now it’s almost the end of Wednesday, the third last day of November. Things are going OK, in fact probably according to plan: my NaNoWriMo profile is showing 40,357 completed words now.
But there are always a few tricks thrown in. My husband surprised me by coming home early tonight, instead of Friday, which is lovely (“great to see you …

So it’s the start of Day 22 of the NaNoWriMo challenge to write 50,000 words of a novel during November. I’ve written 21,606 words. HELP!
I love statistics, but not these ones: I’ve written 43.2% of the required words, but 70% of the time has passed. But there are a few things in my favour. It’s Thanksgiving in the US, which means two of the blogs I write for don’t publish today or tomorrow, giving me several bonus hours of writing time. Secondly, my husband’s suddenly heading up to work on …

Can anybody out there confirm for me that it really, truly already is November 17 (or 16 in some time zones, and perhaps that extra half day at the end of November will help my NaNoWriMo quest)?
When I started this challenge of writing a novel in November (or at least 50,000 words of one), I knew I was crazy and quite possibly stupid, too. But it was so easy at the beginning. I got ahead of the daily target fast and stayed there for a few days. Unfortunately life got …

I just caught up with the news that American novelist Norman Mailer died on Saturday, which struck me as unusual timing. Why? Because it was just last Friday that I started reading one of his books for the first time.
Weirdly, I came to know Norman Mailer through his appearance in an episode of the Gilmore Girls that I saw (dubbed) in Germany. He struck me as a grumpy old soul but intriguing, and I’ve been meaning to grab one of his books for ages. Last week at the library An …

Who would have thought. From a chance comment from Claire (thank you!) that she had seen this blog and would check up on it, I’ve gone from floundering in only-writing-to-be-paid land, to signing up for NaNoWriMo and now to having written over 10,000 words of my novel in just four days.
I’m not saying these are 10,000 good words, but even if only 100 of them are good, that’s still great progress. I’m having more trouble stopping writing than not, and I right now I feel like if I didn’t have …

After I recklessly threw in the idea of doing NaNoWriMo into my last post, yet decided against it, I felt like I was somehow ripping myself off. After all, here’s the very chance I need to actually write this novel during 2007. So I’ve signed up. OMG.
For those of you who don’t know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month and should really be INaNoWriMo because it’s extraordinarily international now, after starting in the US nine years ago. Basically, a bunch of crazy people pledge to write a 50,000 word …