)O( Tea Witch’s Musings )O(

Done and verified.  Another year of Nanowrimo won. 

I’m borrowing an idea from our Nano write ins and writing in 30 minute spurts.  This forces me to focus on a scene for 30 full, uninterrupted minutes and gives me a time to aim for when I can stand and stretch or something.  I’ve discovered that I average about 1,000 words in a 30 minute spurt so they make very productive use of my writing time.  So far I’ve only tried them for writing new scenes.  The same idea make not work as well for editing and rewriting, but I have to wait until after Nanowrimo to find out.

Oh, 47,000 words. Stil no title. 

Sometimes I think writing a book is a lot like climbing Everest.  Except it’s hard for an author to explain Sherpas camping in the back garden.

However, writing in the back garden is a wonderful thing.  I’m off through Monday and plan to do a lot of writing in the garden.  I’m hoping to hit the 50,000 word count before Monday and the start of the work week.

Off to write.

I’ve passed the half-way point in Nanowrimo word count!  I’ve also got a cold or flu or something.  But being unable to concentrate really doesn’t hurt when trying to write very, very fast without thinking. 

I still don’t have a title for the nano novel.  Nanonotitle Novel? 

Day 5 of the Nanowrimo novel and not only am I ahead in word count but I’ve found a use for those Yaks from the Michael Palin documentary on the Himalayas. Which just goes to show you that writers should be avid collectors of bits and pieces of useless information. Information on yak herding can turn out to be important at any time. And since I’ve already done the “research,” I can keep going at nano speed and throw in the yaks.

And today I went to the first Nano write in. It put me well in line with word count and even a bit over where I wanted to be today. It’s the writing competitions that do it. Three 30 minute writing sessions with everyone competing for the highest word count. The prizes were buttons and stickers, but writers will compete on something like highest word cound simply to know they’ve won. I won the first round of the three and am now the proud wearer of a little button that says “I write books.” Which is cool because I do.

Well, I’m slightly ahead in my Nanowrimo word count.  I’d be further ahead but I’ve been having some trouble with Microsoft Word.  The Microsoft error reporting tool has informed me that Microsoft has updates that may fix this problem.  And for all I know, they may.  But apparently to check for these updates I must use MS Explorer - you have to use a Microsoft product to fix a Microsoft product.  So I’ve opened MS Explorer to try this and it keeps failing part way through the process.  Now if I could use Firefox for this download, it would remember how far it had gotten before it lost the connection.  Microsoft apparently doesn’t know how to do this.  So I’m back at the begining.  Perhaps the next time MS is sued for bundling products they can use the excuse that the products they bundle are so bad that no one would willingly use them.  Hey, if I were on the jury and they used that excuse, they’d probably win. 

Back to book…I need a title.