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:

1. Plan my novel more. This year, especially because of the spontaneous, last-minute decision to do NaNoWriMo, I just followed the plan in my head. That means that lots of events are skipping all over the place and there’ll be a lot of work to restructure stuff. Plus I finished the story at about 45,000 words and then wrote some extra scenes that had occurred to me later.
2. Include a chapter outline in this plan. My current novel draft has no chapter breaks. Help!
3. Pay more attention to using dialogue. Hopefully by this time next year I’ll be much better at writing dialogue, and thus be able to include more of it. I wrote a number of scenes in this novel that I’m sure would be stronger with more dialogue and less narrative.
4. Be better prepared and scheduled. It was more luck than good management that got me enough time to finish my novel draft this year. Whether it’s setting aside blocks of time, whole weekends, or a little time each day, I’d be much happier if I was continuously above the target words per day rather than struggling to catch it from week two.

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 to keep writing throughout November, including my husband (who jeopardised my finish by coming home early), my Mum (who now owes me a serve of gyoza) and Milt, Jules, Katrina and Claire (who now owes me a pressie from KL!). It definitely made a difference to know you were keeping an eye on me.

So to sum up, it’ll be a little while yet before you can buy my first novel in a bookshop, but I’ve certainly made a huge step towards that being possible. Now I’m going to stop typing before I develop RSI (sorry, it’s called OOS these days, right?). Novel writer extraordinaire signing off …

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 darling!”) but bad for my novel. On Friday after work we’ll be heading down south with some friends for the weekend, so that just leaves Thursday. Tomorrow. To write 9643 more words. Plus all my regular paid blogging gigs for Thursday AND Friday.

It’s going to be a tough day at the keyboard tomorrow.

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 site from Monday to Friday next week, a gift from the NaNo gods in a way, because although I’ll miss him it means I won’t have to cook, chat, go to bed at a reasonable hour, spend a lot of time on the bus (I’ll have a car), etc, etc, all the way through the last days of NaNoWriMo. So I think achieving the 50,000 words is still possible.

A few goals: I’d like to hit 30,000 by the end of today (Thursday). And I’ve got a busy weekend, but plan to get to 35,000 by the end of Sunday. That leaves “just” 15,000 words during the week, including Wednesday and Thursday when I’m not teaching. It’s going to be close, but I’ve always known I’m deadline driven. The reward of having a draft of my first novel finished will be worth it, I’m sure. Just don’t talk to me for the next 10 days

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 in the way of this (how could my boss/editors/stomach/dirty house etc not understand that November is for novel writing and nothing else?).

With grateful thanks to the Facebook application guys, here’s a neat yet depressing little graph that shows how behind I’ve got. It’s Saturday now and I’m hoping that the weekend will help me catch up to this nasty straight line. The actual writing still seems relatively easy, although it’s not coming out quite as fast as at the beginning; most of it is rubbish, but I’m confident it’s building a structure for some great rewriting after November is over. Which is scarily soon, so I’d better go get typing.

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 any other responsibilities, or a need to eat and sleep, I could make it NaNoWriWEEK instead. My plot is still flying, and I can’t wait to hit the keyboard each day; seeing my graph head onwards towards the magic 50,000 word NaNoWriMo goal is also very rewarding.

If you’re interested in following my progress, you can see my statistics and other info on my NaNoWriMo profile. All supportive messages gratefully received.

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 novel during November. Because all the crazy people are doing it together, it should provide some motivation, and if you do achieve 50,000 words by November 30 you’re pronounced a NaNoWriMo winner.

Incredibly, I just signed up and affiliated into the Perth, Western Australia region and discovered that in this city alone, there are 257 other crazy people planning to write a novel this month. Even down in Margaret River there are 19. I’m definitely not alone. Now the question is whether or not I can hammer out an average of 1700 words a day on my planned-only-in-my-head novel. The goal of NaNoWriMo is not to complete a polished novel, but just to get stuff on the screen, so we’ll see how it goes. Wish me luck!