NaNoWrimo - week 2: An update.

Tuesday of week two, and I have written 15,282 words so far. By now, of course the whole idea of 'a novel in a month' is somewhat less amusing than it was before I started, and increasingly it is taking a real effort of will to sit down every day and write.

But in a way that is one of the best lessons of the whole experience. I have discovered that the old advice is absolutely true. You can't wait around until the creative spirit moves you, because this fickle being rarely appears when you want it, preferring to appear when you have given up hope and just started to 'throw the mud at the wall' to see what happens.

The other very interesting thing about nanowrimo is that there is that you can get 'writing buddies' to provide encouragement by e-mail. But there is something more helpful than e-mails that writing buddies can provide - their daily updated wordcount! Every time I feel like giving up, I see how much the others have written, and my competitive streak kicks in. It never ceases to amaze me how I can then manage to find the energy to write another couple of thousand words at the end of the day, when I had intended to switch off the computer and relax. One glimpse of a buddy's newly increased wordcount is amazingly energising!

So, having just seen that someone has completed their first 20,000 words, I had better get back to work!