Not managing to get much down tonight.  We were late home because of an accident on the motorway.  It was rather unsettling actually.  It had obviously not long since happened when we came along.  When we went past there were not yet any emergency services there.  No Police, no Ambulance.  There were already plenty of people helping and handling things, but it looked like a pretty hard hit.  One of the two cars was crumpled pretty badly.

This made us late going to the gym, then late getting home and so late cooking dinner.  All in all, it was almost ten o'clock by the time I got in front of my computer.

But frankly, I only managed to get a few hundred words down before tiredness overwhelmed me.  Now I can barely think at all.  So sadly, I am going to pack it in and go to bed.   I suppose a few hundred words is better than no words at all.

 Ta-dahhh!!

OK, so this year I have managed to get the right month.  June is the month for SoCNoC.  Got it.  After last years debacle of getting the month wrong, this year I am on the ball ... well sort of anyway.  At least I managed to remember the right month, and I managed to start today (the 1st of the month) ... so that's all good, right?

What was less good, was the fact that as of yesterday morning I still had three different stories cirlcing in my head like hungry vultures and I really couldn't choose between them.  Which made prior planning a bit problematic.

However, by last night I had at least got as far as picking one.

If you look at the Challenges on the Kiwi-Writers site you will see that I am signed up for both SoCNoC AND HalfNoC.  That doesn't mean I plan to do a 50K word body of work as well as a 25K one.  No, what that means is that I signed up for SoCNoC before HalfNoC came along as an option.  If they had both been there at the same time I might only have signed up for the smaller one.

The reason for that is primarily that I'm expecting June to be a busy month this year.  I have quite a bit of project work on at work at the moment that I suspect is going to impact some evenings.  Plus I am in training to do my very first Half Marathon on the 28th of June.  So I am out running or at the gym most evenings of the week at the moment.  I have serious doubts that I will be able to make 50K this month.  So I am signed up for both.  If things go really well and I cruise up to and past the 25K mark then I have every intention of going for the 50K result.  But if everything piles up on top of me then I will be content with the HalfNoC.

I really really don't know how I did it ...  somehow I got all confused and convinced myself that SocNoc had happened over the merry month of May and that I had therefore missed.  And today, I happened upon the Kiwi Writers site and discovered the error of my ways ... and only eight days late!

I'm still going to have a crack at SocNoc ... despite this 8 day deficit I think it is worth having a go at.  Of course, I'm not only behind by the eight days of the month that have already gone behind, but also by any amount of time I might have spent planning my story before the 1st of June...

Ah well - can't be helped now.  I guess on the plus side I have a handy built in excuse if I should fail to churn out the requisite number of words :)

Back at last!   Did ya miss me?  Did ya even notice I was gone?  :)

Anyway, after a long period of doing not much of anything (in a writing sense anyway) I am finally back into it.

Popping back onto Kiwi Writers I discover that there is a new challenge on, and what's more it only kicked off yesterday.  So I signed up for it this very avo.

The topic is:  March Fantasy Madness.  10000 words in 15 days.  Quite achievable so long as I can keep focussed.
The rules are
- must be fantasy (but pretty much any kind of fantasy is fine)
- must contain a wizard, a fish and an evil doer.
- must contain magic of some kind

So my story, which at the time of writing this entry is already 1063 words in length is ...

Marin dir Vessler, Necromancer by Royal Appointment
                                           in
     The Curious Affair of the Fish in the Night-time

Should be a bit of fun.  Looking forward to it already!

Bit of a mixed weekend really .. got 1600 words down on Saturday despite having to get up at 5-30 AM to drive the girls in to the Airport.  They were flying down to Christchurch for the weekend to go to the Muse concert. 

Sunday was a complete stone wall for writing.  Had a really nice day all in all but could only get 265 words down.  It wasn't that I didn't have the time - I just didn't  know what to write.  Most frustrating - especially so close to the end and with a clear goal on how much I need to do each day to finish.  With so few days left there really isn't much time to pick up the slack from days like that.  Such days would, if they have to happen at all, be better happening early in the month - then there'd be plenty of time to pick up the slack.

Anyway, got 1700 words down tonight.  Had a break in the middle to go pick the girls up from the Airport as they returned from ChCh.  Apparently it was the best concert in the history of concerts and Muse are the best live band in the world EVER!!  Ahh the enthusiasm of youth...

Anyway - I'm at 43K now, so only 7K to go ...

Go Me  :)

BIG push today - 4500 words, which is the most words I've ever done in a single day before.
That pushes me up to just over 37K words which puts me nicely back on track for finishing on time.

All in all I am pretty pleased about that - I was starting to feel a little like it was slipping away on me there.

So, all good then.  Back again tomorrow for another 1667 words  :)

Finally, finally got my MC to that big life changing event that I have had in my head from long before I started writing this.  It has taken a great deal longer than I expected to here though.

I am at 32.642 words now - which means there are in theory only 17,358 words left for me to play around with how he copes with the change.

Of course there is no reason I can't go on with this after NaNo ... in fact I strongly suspect I will have to if I want to tell the story fully.  Let alone if I want to ever consider publishing it.

I have been struggling to stay awake for the last half hour or so... literally almost falling asleep at my keyboard but determined to get there.  Once I got there I felt wide awake and wanted to carry on.

But I know I can't.  Work tomorrow and all that jazz.

Off to bed now ... tired, excited, content...

All good.

I've been a bit slack updating on here for a few days now ... not so much on the novel, although I have had limited time to write/type.

Most days I've been managing to get a thousand or so words down which is better than no progress at all.  The problem is I am now at the point of having to do over 2000 words every day for the rest of the month or else I won't make it.  A sobering thought ... I am now at just over 30000 words, so the thought of having come so far only to fail at this stage is not a happy one.

Still, I haven't failed yet.  And I am not planning to.  I am just laying out what is ahead clearly in my mind so I know what is needed.

Now what is it again?  Ah yes...

Words!

Finally got to an action scene in my story.  I'm a little worried about that.  Did that take too long?  All those words and no action scene till now?

On that subject I finally got to 25000 words today!  Yippee!!
For all my concern about the late coming action scene, it was the thing that propelled me to the 25K mark and beyond.  Still haven't had the 'Big Event' for my MC yet ... but very close now.

After getting to the 25K point, Lynne and I went out to a birthday party bbq.  A nice break with a chance to catch up on friends we haven't seen for a wee while.  Very nice.

Pretty much avoided beer all evening cos it makes my head heavy and leaves me unable to write (even after only a very small amount) and have come home and added another 1K to the tally.  Now at 26,000 - exactly 26K by a strange coincidence.

Anyway  - hoping to get in to the welly meet tomorrow for a nice dose of enthusiasm.

Sadly, didn't quite get to 25,000 words tonight.  I was hoping to get there tonight to make the halfway through the novel point at the halfway through the month mark.  Unfortunately I got a bit too far behind over the last couple of days and couldn't quite catch up tonight.

Notwithstanding that, I did 2400 words tonight and ended up on exactly 23,000... so I really am not too far behind.

All in all I am happy enough with where I am.

Still haven't got to that big moment for my MC yet though ... but it is getting close now  :)

Well, although I only did 1002 words today I am still stoked cos I passed the 20K mark tonight.

W00t....

Lynne went off to pick up her folks from the airport for their flying (heh) visit and the girls went off together to some movie quiz night.  So I had the house to myself for a couple of hours.  Of course, some of that time was urgent last minute tidying and cleaning for the visitors tomorrow .... but in amongst all that I managed to get down 1K  which got me over that 20K point.

40% of the way through my NaNo novel and my MC still hasn't had his big moment... not sure if I should be worried about that or not.  Certainly if the story was going to be only 50K long in total I would be, but I suspect it will grow past that point once November is over.

Well, it's been a busy old weekend and no mistake.  And some of it even included writing.

Lots of outside stuff yesterday.  Lynne's folks are here for a visit this week so we were going a bit nuts in the garden.  Mowing, raking, chopping, weeding, composting ... etc etc etc

To make matters worse just when we were about to pack it in for the day some friends of ours dropped by and loaned us their mulcher which we have been trying to mooch off them for a while.  So after a brief break of having visitors we were back outside to give the mulcher a whirl and get rid of some of our green waste.  Great progress made but I have numerous bumps and bruises now, including a really impressive graze from an angry punga that is still aching more than 24 hours later.  Not much writing last night, just enough to keep me on track for the day.

Went in to Welly for the 2nd official Get-Together today.  Very enjoyable.  I had already met Travis, Duncan and Andy at the Kick-Off but I also got to meet Michael and Mig for the first time which was cool.  Had a great time.  Got  little writing done and chatted about all sorts of stuff, including what we are writing, surprisingly enough.

Got some more time to write tonight and the words are flowing smoothly once again.  Still haven't got to The Big Event, which I rather thought would be happening sooner in the story than it appears it will.  But it is getting fairly close now so I suppose I should just be patient  :)

Well, it hasn't been a great few days from a writing perspective.  I rather lost my focus.  I suspect I was overthinking things because I started to review and revise my plot in my head and before I knew it I had rather locked up my brain.  I couldn't figure out what to do next.  Whether I wanted to go back to my original plotline or whether the concerns that had risen to the top were really important enough to be acted on.

I managed to write 500-odd words each day for the last couple of days just by focussing on a couple of conversations that I knew were going to happen regardless of the plot direction.  So I suppose that was good.  Some progress is still better than no progress after all.

I think I have now resolved things in my head and should be able to get moving again.  My brain freeze has put me a bit behind the eight-ball though.  And I have probably got a fairly busy weekend of non-writing stuff ahead of me.

Ah well - we shall see.

It's all gone reasonably well so far today ... got myself up to 14K as a word count.  Which puts me back on track for my 2K per day goal.  And since it is only 8:27pm anything I do for the rest of the night is cutting into tomorrows count - which is nice.

Having said that, I have an early start at work tomorrow - have to be in town at 6-45am, so it will need to be an early bed for me tonight  :)

Interesting Twist today though ... for the first time I've had a character kind of do something unexpected on me.  One of my characters just did something completely out of left field that wasn't part of my planned-out-in-my-head plot.  Fortunately it hasn't required a revision of my plot, and in fact will improve certain things for later on.  Nice of the character to help out really...  :)

Well the last two days have been a little light on the word count.  Got something written each day, which is a bonus - but not really enough.

I'm still more or less on target for my 2K per day goal, but I'm not ahead of it any more.  :(

However, I've got the afternoon off and shortly will have the house to myself for some hours ... so I am hoping to get things rolling again.

Well, apart from being the day when I cracked the 10K barrier, today has been a bit of a slow writing day.  Only managed to get another 1000 on this evening, finishing up at 11K.  Still ahead of what is needful although I am a little concerned that I might be running a bit dry.

Surely not ... I haven't even got to the main life altering event yet ... surely must just be a bit of a speed bump.

Back to it tomorrow ...

10000 words.  Never really thought I'd write so much.  Never have before.  In my heart of hearts I possibly doubted I would this time either.

Yesterday wasn't a great day.  For various reasons I didn't sit down to write until 9pm and when I did my head felt slow and stupid.  I managed to get up to 9500 words though before getting called away to other things  :)

Determined not to let that 10K grail elude me I hopped on the  PC this morning.  In a strange sort of way I was almost pleased that my youngest was mucking about and being all slow getting ready for school this morning ... it gave me the time to get those extra 500 words down.

Well ... that's about me for the day.

I've been writing on and off all evening (in between feeding the animals, running after various other members of the household, finding the right music to listen to while writing, dashing outside to watch the neighbours fireworks from our deck).  Despite all that I have done a reasonable amount of writing and am now resting at a comfortable 8163 words

All in all I'd have to say I am pretty pleased with the way the day has gone.

Hoping to get along to the Wellington meeting tomorrow (Sunday) afternoon.  That's a bit of a wait and see thing cos Lynne obviously has big plans for housework again tomorrow.  I shall have to see if I can convince her with the offer of coffee  :)

Been very busy today.  As suspected Lynne had big plans for work around the house.  We mowed, and weedeated and mowed and weedeated some more.  Lynne's folks are coming up for a visit soon and we are trying to get the property all tickety-boo for the visit.  Especially out the back since Lynne will want to show off our vege garden... :)

Despite all that non-writing activity, I have still managed to get 1900 words down so far.  Which is good.  Lynne took the #1 child out for a coffee this avo for a couple of hours and left me to it.   Which means progress.  That means that right at the moment I am on 7008 words which is well ahead of where I intended to be.

And as it is only 8pm I have plenty of time left to me for more.  So back to it I go!

OK, so we're at Day 3 of NaNoWriMo now.

Day One went extremely well ... got down 3759 words which was a real surprise.  I rather expected to find both my 2000 word goal and the 1667 word statistical minimum a bit of a struggle.  However it really wasn't that bad.

I kicked off at midnight, mostly just to be in at the start - but also a little because I was wound up and excited for it to finally be starting.  I really only intended to write 100 or so words just to get me started, but I ended up sitting here in front of my PC until 1am and got down 1200 or so words!  Got me off to a good start on the day but wasn't the best 5 hours later when I had to get up and go to work  :)

That 1200 stood me in very good stead when I came back to it after work that day.  I found the story already there and waiting for me and I was off!  Another 2500 words just flew out of my head and onto the computer and I was in bed before midnight for a much needed catch up on sleep.

Day Two didn't go quite so magically although I am happy enough with where I am.  Got held up late at work, late dinner etc etc etc.  Still, at the end of it all I was up to 5088 words, which is plenty ahead of my 4000 goal.

And now Day Three dawns.  Plenty of challenges both in writing and for writing time today.  Lynne has plans for the day that seem to involve a lot of housework.  I'd like to get to the gym at some stage as I've been neglecting that a bit lately, and then of course there is the writing.  Which I should be doing now instead of writing this  :)