Nanowrimo: half-time thoughts

Half-way through Nanowrimo, and for once I’m bang on schedule to finish the novel, at 25,116 words – and during October I finished off my 2016 novel as a warm-up, so I’m feeling pretty happy. Here are a few random thoughts about the whole thing.

I’ve only once written more than this without finishing the novel in November. I've already beaten previous flame-outs Happy When It Rains (3384), I Couldn't See Past the Spider (8341), Triumphs of the Two Husbands (15,991) and Mygret Zend and the Sickening Dinner (21,404), and tomorrow I should overtake Holding Hands Among the Stars (25,552). After that come the five novels I did finish writing during November: The Fear Man, three Howard Phillips novels, and Beatrice et Veronique.

I’ve been off social media since October 21 and that has been very good for my writing. I’m still reading some stuff, looking at interesting Twitter accounts while signed out, but I can’t interact with them, so it just becomes like reading teletext if it were written by friends and people I admire. There's none of the distraction caused by wondering whether what you've posted will get any likes, or if it will be taken the wrong way, or if it’ll go viral. I still can’t believe my tweet about using damp hands to open plastic bags didn’t go big. It’s changed my life!

I’ve absolutely loved using the Freewrite, and I’ve got over my shyness about using it in public. It does have a mechanical keyboard, but it’s nowhere near as loud as the Das Keyboard I use with my PC, and maybe only twice as loud as a regular laptop keyboard anyway. I didn’t hear it at all at our Nanowrimo region’s all-night write-over (although there are some very boisterous members in the group), and I didn’t feel it attracted attention at all in pubs or cafes, except from people who wanted to know what it was. One bartender came back more than once to ask more questions, and I felt kind of reticent since it looks cool but it doesn’t really do anything except let you write, and it’s a bit hard to explain why that’s a good thing in a thirty second conversation! I’ve regularly written a thousand words before my tea has gone cold. I can’t wait for the more portable Freewrite Traveler to arrive. I backed it on Indiegogo the instant it was possible.

The Wetherspoon’s app is brilliant. I can see my daughter off on her school bus, go in the pub, order my jam on toast and tea, and get straight on with writing. In all the years of my co-editor and I going out for TQF editorial meetings, I doubt I’ve gone to the bar more than ten times. I find it really awkward. The Wetherspoon’s app is making me like pubs. Shame about all the Brexit stuff in there, but it's like any pub with a daft theme, you tune it out pretty quickly.

Getting my chapter done first thing in the morning is terrific. It stops me stressing about it and lets me get to bed at a decent time. But I do have to get out of the habit of patting myself on the back for the subsequent hour.

However, going to the pub or a cafe every morning isn't sustainable long-term. I've been home by ten with the rest of the day clear for paid work, so that hasn't been a problem (in fact I've been really productive this month, and I've had a lot of innovative new ideas), but a few pounds a day for tea and bus fare builds up over time. I have to find a way to create that early morning cafe feel at home.

I’d really like to keep going after this. I have a bunch of other unfinished novels that could do with reaching a conclusion (see above, and that's just those I began during Nanowrimo), plus last year I said I would write a Doctor Who parody for a charity range, and I would still really like to do that. You can buy the others here. It’s for a good cause! Even if it ends up being too late for that range, I had a nice idea for a book and put quite a lot of preparatory work into it, and it would be a shame to waste that. It would make for a fun issue of TQF if nothing else.

Anyway, hope you're having a good November. I am reading submissions at the moment, and should have replied to everyone by the end of the first week of December. Our next issue will be out later that month, and is already shaping up nicely.

PS. Please consider buying Interzone #278 or even better subscribing. It contains my reviews of Unholy Land by Lavie Tidhar and Hazards of Time Travel by Joyce Carol Oates but you know that's going to be the least of its treasures.