complete NaNoWriMo 2008

i haven’t done it! i’m trying to give up! i can’t even give up. gah!

how do you give up these days? i thought it was going to be a subsection of “i’m done”.

anyway, um, well, yes i’m still at 807 words. i don’t know, i think being away for the first day or two of november didn’t help, though that’s no excuse (cf. moose). i think i was trying to run before i can walk. i need a robert ullrey podcast: from couch to 50K words in 30 days.

oh well, ho hum.

i feel such a fraud having a green tick here.

Done! I won! And early, too. Now I can sit back and relax… well, not really. Now I can get back to work on my other novel!

I’m plumbing the depths of Nano techniques here. Following on from Agent Ish’s canny advice to replace all apostrophes with the full terminology – I am for I’m etc – I cunningly decided to replace all CC’s with Curlychaos SoapDragon to get an extra word in each time. But for some reason, it has replaced them with CURLYCHAOS SOAPDRAGON instead – bloody Morten Harket messing with my keyboard again. I also forgot to match case, so I’ve just read a sentence where someone said “Are you accusing me…” and it’s changed to “Are you aCURLYCHAOS SOAPRDRAGONusing me…” which is quite amusing but I suspect as a point of honour I can’t let it stay like that.

_{Just thought I’d share. Must get back to writing now!}

Wrote about 4K this morning. I feel in some ways like I could keep going, but there are some other things I need to do, too. In any case, it doesn’t matter. If I don’t get back to it today, I have almost all of tomorrow to write, so should be able to come close to finishing then.

Just 12,000 words left, and 5 days left to write. Should be very doable. Just wish I didn’t have a sore throat, sore ears, etc. But my fingers aren’t sore, so no excuse not to type!

After keyboard problems at the weekend I had to spend some time this evening setting up a new keyboard and then I went back and fixed all the dodgy punctuation in the stuff I wrote yesterday. I did hope to do 2,000 words today but it ended up being 1,100 – still, I edited out some complete dross and managed to get a joke in about instant diet cappuccino so the evening has not been wasted!

Plan for the rest of the week:

• Tues 2,500
• Wed 2,000
• Thurs 2,500
• Sat 6,000
• Sun 2,000

Should be possible – am hoping that the prospect of a deadline on Sunday night will focus my mind. It would be seriously annoying to get to say 48,000 words and then not finish – I don’t think I could bear to let that happen!

so up to 31,000 altogether. I’d been hoping for 5,000 but other things (= G being needy) intervened. Tomorrow should be easier as he’s out and about, although I do need to do some cleaning. First things first and all that – completing Nano is more important than a clean bathroom! _{please don’t tell my mother I just said that}

The Gang have just been back to Madam Ish’s for some dream interpretation and mysterious hand movements. It turns out some have lied about their dreams (er, that would be me) while others (who shall remain anonymous, SOD here) have had wishful-thinking dreams involving Pringles being healthy, and as for Moose I wouldn’t like to give away what she dreams about especially while she’s in Salzburg he he ;)

They’re now in a champagne bar (VERTIGO 42) and my shift key is playing up in a most irritating fashion – sorry that’s real life not the story. Back to the story. The poodles have been smuggled in on the pretence that the Gang are carrying out a study into the effect of hypoxia on canines. I’d never heard of hypoxia until I went to a talk at the Fiends AGM on Thursday by someone who took a load of people up Everest to measure it. Quite pleased with that, you have to use everything at your disposal ;)

another 2000 words on the page this evening and again it took less than 90 minutes.

The Gang have just been pursuing a green alien through central Milton Keynes – they finally catch up with it because it’s got lost at a roundabout. Then they’ve visited Waitrose to get emergency cider _{that bit is not autobiographical in any way, honest ;)}

The plan is to write 10,000 words this weekend and then the end will be nearly in sight.

I’ve written 2,000 words this evening which takes my total to 25,000 i.e. half way through. It only took about an hour too! Am now feeling very positive that I can get this done. Taking the blinkers off and writing what the hell I like (safe in the knowledge I can edit later) seems to have worked wonders for the flow.

The Gang have just had a mysterious encounter in Tavistock Square involving a secret passage leading to a chamber which contains a giant Eastern Island Tissue Dispenser. A clue is written on one of the tissues… And they’re now on their way to Northampton to investigate the aliens from outer space, although one of the more caffeine-dependent members has gone to Madam Ish’s Espresso Bar to see if she can shed (ho ho) any light on said clue. Do we suspect a dreadful mobile phone miscommunication coming up in the near future?

Actually I’m slightly worried that an air of gloom has been cast over proceedings, because when I’m tired and melancholy I find it hard to keep a light touch in the writing. But any unduly miserable bits can be taken out later, or I may decide the thing can’t be relentlessly upbeat all the way through and there do need to be some ups and downs.

And I’m having trouble keeping my eyes open, so I’m going to hit the hay. I managed to write 3372 words today, which isn’t too shabby, considering all the distractions I had. Still about 20,000 words to go, but I already feel like I’m on the home stretch. Finishing shouldn’t be a problem. And although some parts of this story totally suck, I think it will nevertheless give me a worthwhile first draft to work from.