And so it begins

Update 10.55am (31st October ...) LOL, started Nanowrimo one day early. Who stole my calendar?


It's 8:30am on November 1st, and I have two NaNoWriMo forms in front of me. The first shows 30 rows with a blank space for the number of words written during each day. The second is an intraday progress form, broken down into hours from 9am until 11pm. (You can download both forms from this page)

I'll deal with the second form first. The idea is to write 500 words per hour, starting at the top of the hour and finishing when I have the 500. Then I get to do whatever I want (work, coffee, chocolate) until the beginning of the next hour. If you have a day job, just block out the hours you work and do your writing in the rest. (You need about 4 hours to do your daily NaNo wordcount, but should only use about 15-20 minutes of each hour for actual writing. E.g. 6pm until 10pm, or 6am to 7.30am, 30 mins at lunch, then another 1 1/2 hours at night.)

By the way, during Nano I recommend oven-cooked meals, not things you have to babysit every step of the way. Roasts and pies and one-tray meals are in, steaks and stir fry and so on are out. There are plenty of simple recipe ideas on my website, many of them ideal for Nanowrimo.  (E.g. chicken rice one night, then chicken wraps the next with the leftovers.)

Now, I'm already breaking a rule by writing this instead of getting on with my wordcount, but I'm actually starting at 9am today. By then the rest of the household will have gone out and left me in peace.

Simon Haynes is the author of the Hal Spacejock and Hal Junior series (Amazon / Smashwords / other formats)