Down to the Wire

Short Fiction - 0
Long Fiction - a lot
Poetry - 0
Total Words -
Paragraphs of Notes - 0

I have really, really been struggling with this NaNo. As you might have guessed by the lack of posting last Monday. Had I a lick of sense I would have quit while I was ahead and moved on to something else. I did that one year, seven days and 10,000 words in and I went with a totally different story and still won.

It’s not that I don’t like my story, I just have zero interest in working on it. Last Monday I was a mere 6,000 words behind, today I’m...uh... something like 13,700 behind. Which was better than it was going into the weekend when I was close to 20,000 behind.

I have to admit, when I decided to do NaNo this year I did not anticipate the toll babysitting has been taking on me. It’s not just the time spent babysitting, it’s the fact that the grandbaby is an energy vampire. A few hours with her and I’m exhausted. Plus there’s been some extra babysitting thrown in for good measure.

So between the lack of interest and the babysitting, there’s a very good chance I won’t finish NaNo on time this year. First year since my first time that I’ll be participating and not finishing.

If I do finish on time, it’ll be thanks to the writer’s best friend, my Alphasmart Neo. Saturday I sat in my office for about seven hours working on my lap top and only managed a measly 888 words. Then I switched to my Neo and did close to 600 more in just a couple of hours.

Yesterday I sat in the living room for a couple hours here, a couple hours there, and wrote just over 4,000 words. Kinda wished I’d been working on the Neo exclusively Saturday too.

The reason I write faster on the Neo is there are no distractions, no bells and whistles, just words. At the end of the day I just sit back, plug my Neo into my lap top, and watch the words appear in a Word document file. Can’t get much simpler than that, and when it comes to writing, simple is better.

So keep your eye on the little widget on the right. 3500 words a day to finish isn’t too much to ask, is it?

And do yourself a favour, go to ebay and buy yourself a Neo - they stopped making them a few years ago so the only way you can get one is used.

Alphasmart Neo. Don’t do NaNo without one.