Lazy Sunday #47

Hello, been a while since we sat and had a chat like this but got to be honest things have been crazy here the last month. First, I had an amazing weekend at #Darker in Peterborough, which I have told you all about, then we had a two week delay awaiting the delivery of my grandson, he certainly made hard work of coming into the world. Family, obviously, came first for the next couple of weeks trying to help out my daughter and her partner as much as possible.

We arrive at the first of November and I start #NanoWriMo. I write for one day, yes, you heard me right, one day, before my grandson caused more drama and had a day in hospital. I am not going to go into details too much but let’s just say that a swollen head is enough to give parents and grandparents alike near nervous breakdowns.

So today I take up my #NanoWriMo baton once more and need to play catch up so here are my current stats…

Words written – 1667

Words that should be written by the end of today – 8,335

Words in deficit – 6668

Number of words needed daily to finish on target  – 1880

As you can see not a total disaster as such yet, I am going to update you twice a week, once on a Wednesday, from a purely writing standpoint, and this post on a Sunday, about the actual issues or benefits of fitting this into everyday life. I had signed up for #NanoWriMo once before, but then other things got in the way and I never even started, as I have been struggling to get back into work mode I thought this year was the perfect time to give it a go as a means to getting back to daily writing. I can already see certain days will be easier than others for me, I am probably better off on days where I can work during the day rather than evenings. I have realised if I come home tired that I find it harder to write, and if I am foolish enough to have a bath to unwind after a stressful day, well I can write off any writing at all for that evening, because the most stressful thing I am likely to do is turn the page of a book or hit play on the remote control.

The one piece of advice I would give anyone doing Nano is, don’t get too hung up comparing the number of words you have written to anyone elses. I know people who post their word counts every day, people who hit the target well before anyone else, the thing is everyone works at their own pace. I could sit and type out the menu for our local chinese over and over again and hit a word count target, the fact is, that does not make a book. You aim to hit the targets to help yourself become more productive in terms of writing daily and  to improve your own writing habits but the thing that really matters is the quality of the story you are telling. The grammar etc, yes that will all be sorted in the editing but while people can generally overlook a stray comma or two, they will not forgive a weak plot or storyline. Focus on your own story and though of course we all look at others word counts (let’s face it I just shared mine) the thing is to remember that as long as you are doing the bet you can working in your life then you don’t need to worry about anything else.

Are you doing #NanoWriMo this year? How do you feel seeing the word counts posted all over social media?