"Stab them in the face!"

And indeed, the rest of November went as quickly as the first week!

Much to my own surprise, I am still on schedule with NaNoWriMo; up to 37,000 words today, and I'm hoping to squeeze in a bit more later too, so I can go into this week slightly ahead (exciting social things happening on Thursday, and then a day off for a hangover on Friday). I did mean to update the blog around about halfway through, but free time shrinks down to miniscule status during November, and every time I found space to write the thing, it was about 1am. So as a short round up, here are some things I have learnt so far this month:

It is perfectly possible to write 2,000 words a day. Yep. It's just that I have to put the time aside for it. Part of where I was going wrong with A Boy of Blood and Clay was that I was trying to fit the writing time around other things, so I would only get a few hundred words out here and there. I wasn't dedicating a chunk of time to it, but rather writing it in between other commitments. What this left me with was a story that was stilted, choppy and very difficult to get back into each day.

It's difficult, because the only time I have is in the evenings, and what I really like to do in the evening is read, have a snuggle with my bloke, and fart about on the internet. The fact remains though, if I want to get these books finished, I have to write everyday, and I have to write a decent amount.

I've also learnt that Ink for Thieves has a life of its own, and my chances of actually finishing the story at 50,000 words are very slim indeed. I have now accepted the fact that I'll be working on it into the next month, and have a new vague sort of deadline of the 13th December. This is the end of my week off in December, and I'm hoping to get a lot done (in between the hideousness of christmas shopping, of course. Argh)

And now it's time for a gravy dinner. :) Guido Foss waits for me, covered in bug juices and about to discover that the Embers have even more unpleasant surprises for her.


ps) I put an extract of the novel up on my NaNo profile (it's under Novel Info). It's very rough of course, but it was a passage that made me laugh, and I think you should only put up extracts that don't give too much away.