I’ve completed National Novel Writing Month for the last two years in a row, but I can’t do it this year. I’d love to, and could probably find the time, at the expense of many other things, but I don’t think it would be wise. I’m just over a month into the first term of uni and not really into a proper routine yet; my work would undoubtedly suffer if I tried to write 1667 words per day around it, and I don’t want to fall behind at this stage. If I’d plotted out the story this month and knew exactly what I was going to write each day then I might have managed it, but making it up as I go takes too long. I can reel off a list of excuses, but it comes down to being just a little too busy, which is annoying - the feeling of satisfaction at the end is immense, even if the project is at times hellish. Next year, hopefully.

I finished a big project today, and am finally able to relax. It’s possible there’ll be more to do, but the main body should be out of the way now. It’s a great relief - I was getting to the point where I felt guilty doing anything else. But now it’s over, and there’s now nothing standing between me and editing the NaNoWriMo novel. Yikes.

Self-publishing website Lulu.com are offering NaNoWriMo winners one free bound copy of their novel. Unlike last year this applies to international customers too, and includes postage. I appreciate they get free advertising from it, but it strikes me as a kind thing to do and I’ll certainly take them up on it. Last year I ordered a couple of copies of my 2005 novel and they came out very well; the binding and paper quality were excellent, and the only (technical) flaws were of my own making since you have to format it yourself.

Much waltzing later I’ve decided it’s called ‘Frozen Carousel’. I managed to update my official profile with the title and excerpt (the first couple of paragraphs) just before the midnight deadline, and it’s now too late for further changes. Total writing time: 70.5hrs.

Phew. Unlike last year, the story makes enough sense that I could hand it to somebody this evening and let them read it. This isn’t going to happen, but it makes the editing process slightly less daunting. I’m determined to get it into a properly readable state within a few months.

It’ll be great to wake up tomorrow with no pressure, but I think I’ll miss it slightly…

It is done. Hooray! 53,625 words at final count. I think I know what the title will be. I’ll think about it this evening and finalise it later.

What time is it now? Time to dance.

I didn’t win anything in a recent writing competition, nor was I ‘highly commended’ or even ‘commended’, but I did at least make the ’shortlist’. I think they capped it at 100 entries, so making the top 25 isn’t too bad. I particularly like the third place entry.

Not much left in NaNoWriMo: the penultimate scene brought me to 49,650 words exactly. I was in Walsall this morning, but got back in time to write a fair chunk this afternoon, finishing off after the theatre this evening. Tomorrow is all about the ending, as well as a title! I wanted to call it Nutcrackers and Fireflies when I started, but that turned out to have nothing to do with anything, so perhaps not. Given that I have a fair idea what’s going to happen in the finale, the title might cause me the most problems tomorrow.

Incidentally, Song of the Day is ‘Whistle for the Choir‘ by The Fratellis. I like it a lot.

If you could stop ‘nodding’, ‘turning’, ’smiling’, ‘walking’ and ‘looking’, that’d be just great.

I had a job interview at the local library today. It’s for a part-time assistant’s post which I think would be just right for me, but we’ll see whether they agree - they said I’ll get a call tomorrow morning. I’ve never seen any male staff members there, but hopefully that’s due to the average job applicant…Tomorrow will either be bad or good+scary depending on which way it goes, but the intermittent period of not knowing is actually quite good.

You know what I said a couple of days ago about having figured out the third act of my NaNoWriMo novel? Utter nonsense. It eventually struck me this evening that two major plot points were mutually exclusive. I’ve stopped at 750 words today, and plan to spend tomorrow morning figuring it all out. Then I’ll be home free; perhaps.

A very busy day yesterday meant I didn’t get back home until 0300, at which point I had no desire to write 1700 words, but I’ve caught up today, thankfully. I’m just starting to get an inkling of what’s going to happen in the final act, which has been worrying me for a few days. I’d already included passages from the finale, but had no idea how I was going to get there. I suppose proper authors plan this kind of thing beforehand.

I thought it was an interesting Strictly this evening. The couples who normally do very well were a little lacklustre, while the underdogs caught up in a big way. Once Claire’s gone - presumably next week - the remaining five couples will all be of a very high quality, more so than in any previous series. It looks like Matt Dawson has managed to shake his inhibitions, which has helped enormously. I remember being nervous to tell people I’d started ballroom dancing in case they made fun, but at some point decided I couldn’t be bothered with that bollocks any more. There’s still a what-would-the-cool-kids-at-school-think-of-this filter in my head, but it’s diminishing in size and importance, which I guess is one of the advantages of getting older.

I drove back from Walsall at 1700 on Friday night and can only imagine I inadvertently performed a ritual to placate the traffic gods, as the M6 and M42 were clear all the way back to Solihull. That’s just weird.

Finally, juggling inside an inverted glass cone is an oddly soothing sight:

Worth watching all the way through - he goes up to seven balls.

I went to the clinic this afternoon and had hot water fired into my ear at a high velocity, which unblocked it almost immediately. This was great, but promptly made the other feel like it was blocked in comparison, so they did that one too. I can now hear properly for the first time in ages - I so want one of those machines! Once they found out that I fix computers I was asked to help out with a problem, and they gave me a 50% discount!

1537 words left. Gotta go.

Just passed 25,000 words, which is a pleasing milestone in itself, but more importantly means I’m on track for the first time since Day Two. Hooray!

I’ve been a little distracted today after waking up with a completely blocked ear. This happens to me once a year, and I hate it more than I despise the first guy who sat down and thought ‘hmm, this tiny tree thing tastes gross, I shall market it as a vegetable and make millions’. Is so bloody annoying. I can’t drive or get much sense of sound direction without doing lighthouse impressions, and it hurts if I don’t soften it up with ear drops every few hours. On a couple of occasions I’ve been able to fix the problem with, um, unorthodox methods that hurt rather a lot, but it’s always taken four to five days, plus Nod justifiably tells me off for messing about with my hearing Unfortunately I have dancing, a guitar lesson, a computer-related trip to Walsall and a job interview in the next five days, and would like to avoid cancelling them all. As ever, the doctors only have syringing sessions on Tuesdays, so I had to decide between sticking it out or paying for a private clinic. I finally decided to go for the latter, although it’s bloody expensive at £65. They can do it tomorrow afternoon, however, and it’s just about worth it. Just. I need to figure out how I’m going to get to Solihull and back, mind.

Today’s the first time for over a week that I’ve finished writing before midnight, and it’s nice to have a relaxing evening. I’ve been flitting in and out of the famous Week Two blues, alternating between confidence that everything is going to be fine and the utter conviction that I wouldn’t recognise a decent plot point if it came through the door with a gun. I also had the first ‘it’s midnight and I have 1000 words to go’ moment, which I hate. Hopefully I can avoid any more of those for the next two weeks.

I heard Mur Lafferty’s great interview with Cory Doctorow and he gave two nuggets of advice for aspiring writers, which could be paraphrased as:

1. You don’t need a routine - you can write wherever and whenever you like (I just listened to Mur on The NanoMonkeys where she elabourates on this advice)
2. The world is the same today as it was yesterday - anything that seems different, whether on the page or out there, is all in your head.

I didn’t understand what he meant by #2 at first, but it stuck with me throughout the evening and I’m beginning to see what he’s saying. It’s as much general life advice, I guess. Interesting. I’ve definitely been guilty of #1. I supposedly “can’t” write unless the dishes are done and the room is vaguely tidy. Bah. If I have to not do the washing up to break that habit, so be it I’ve also developed the very stupid tick of checking my word count every paragraph. This is a bad idea in many ways, not least of which is that I don’t get into any kind of rhythm and am always aware of what I’m doing and how much is remaining. I’m determined not to do it tomorrow.

Phew. 4000 words later and I’m over 18,000. Still 1872 words behind target, but that’s manageable. Thank goodness for that - I woke up this morning with little clue what was going to happen next. I had a beginning and ending, but the middle act turned out to be made of smoke when I tried to get a grip on it. Happily a walk around town produced a few ideas. And if all else fails, there’s always Raymond Chandler’s indispensable advice from last year:

When in doubt, have two guys come through the door with guns.

Now to wash up, put the shower doors back on and ponder whether it’s too late to watch the recorded Torchwood…Don’t think it is

Ben and I spent the entire of yesterday taking apart, re-sealing and reassembling my shower, which desperately needed doing. The previous job had been done so well that at one point Ben detached one corner and pulled a string of sealant free of two sides of the shower in one go. There was also a massive gaping hole leading straight through to the floorboards. I got to use the sealant gun, which was fun Many thanks to Ben for giving up his time! We didn’t finish until very late, at which point it was a dash to the fish-and-chip shop before he had to drive back to Oxford.

As a result I didn’t manage to write anything, but that’s ok because today is officially designated NaNo Catchup Day. I’m at 14,000 words and should be at 20,000, so I don’t care how bad it is, I’m going to get as much written as possible this afternoon. Back later, if I’m not too tired

I headed over to Walsall yesterday afternoon. I’d been asked to upgrade an ME machine to XP, and there were a few smaller problems on a different PC. I was planning to stop at PC World to buy an XP upgrade, but realised that I’d be passing a Currys that was far less out of my way. I walked in and was trying to find the software section when somebody senior-looking passed by:

He: Was there something you were looking for?
Me: Hi. Do you sell Windows XP?
He: We should have that, yes.
Me: Great, I need the upgrade version…?
He: An upgrade?
Me: Yeah, so I can go from Windows 98.
He: [beat] You’ve lost me, I’m afraid. They’re two separate programs. You can’t upgrade them.
Me: Ok, but I have Windows 98 already, and I just need to upgrade it to XP.
He: [looks at me like I am sprouting horns] You just want a copy of Windows XP, then?
Me: …Yes.

He transferred me to another member of staff, who dug around in a cupboard and the first box he pulled out was an XP Home Upgrade. Lucky.

The motorway was remarkably clear and the journey didn’t take as long as I’d feared. The various computer problems turned out to be fairly minor, happily. One had been described as ‘I can’t delete blocks of text in Word’, so I typed some gibberish, highlighted it and pressed delete. Word promptly placed a message in the taskbar that said ‘Delete Block? No (Yes)”, with no obvious way to select either option. This was a new one on me, and after drawing a blank in the options a quick google revealed it to be the ‘Help for Wordperfect Users” setting. Strange.

Thanks to the wonder of Hettie the TomTom I didn’t have to worry about finding my way, but the return journey was dreadful nevertheless. It was pouring with rain at rush hour on the M6, and my brain was a little frazzled after three hours of upgrading and reconfiguration, but didn’t go too badly until I took the wrong exit off a roundabout. Hettie was calmly telling me to turn around, but somebody behind me decided that despite heavy rain, darkness and the speed limit, I should be going faster. It was too busy for him/her to overtake, too dark for me to see turnings / laybys far enough in advance to pull in, and too wet to have much time to look anyway. That lasted about ten minutes, during which time I got myself more and more worked up, until I finally ditched the guy when the road split into two lanes. Hettie then, as ever, cut across country using the smallest wombat trails she could find, but did bring me out onto a main road within a mile of Stratford, which was quite impressive. I arrived home at 2000, realised that the last thing I felt like was waiting half an hour for a pizza to cook, so went to Burger King. Not healthy, or even terribly warm, but sometimes it’s just the Thing To Do.

I’d managed 700 words before leaving that morning, and another thousand seemed like a daunting prospect. It took me an hour to settle into a rhythm, but by one o’clock had reached 2300, my highest daily total so far. I’m still behind the recommended total, but slowly catching up. I find it easier to write when it’s late, although I can tell while doing so that the quality isn’t up to daytime standards. Ah well, I’ll fix that in the edit