Novel: Day 2

Wow, who would have thought that writing a novel could be so friggin' difficult? I sat down last night for a couple of hours and only managed 500 words. Combined with about 500 from earlier in the day my total is now hovering just over 1000 words. That is well below the pace I need to achieve (and maintain!) for the rest of the month.

Other aspects of novel-writing I am finding frustrating:

• This morning during my bicycle ride to work I thought of a super-fantastic title for my book. I should have pulled over and written it down, though, because now I can't remember it.
• The U key on the old laptop I'm using for this endeavor is sort-of broken. If you're not paying attention while typing and making an effort to strike that key in a very specific and forceful way, your keystroke will be lost. So for example the phrase Shut up! is recorded as Sht p!

More updates may follow next week. I'm going into a deep hermit-like seclusion this weekend and I want to hit the 10,000 word mark by Sunday's end. So don't even try to contact me, as I'm unplugging the phone and will only be checking my e-mail 5 times per hour.

I'm writing a novel

It's (Inter)National Novel Writing Month. I've decided to give it a shot. The pressure and taunting from The Filthy Critic was finally too much to bear.

For the purpose of this event, a novel is defined as 50,000 words. That works out to an average of almost 1700 words per day, over the course of the 30 days of November. If I commit to doing a solid uninterrupted two hour session of writing per day, that's about 14 words per minute. I'm feeling pretty relaxed about it because I took touch-typing in high-school and I was clocked at like 70 words per minute. So this should be no problem.

Here is my NaNoWriMo profile, where interested parties can track my (lack of) progress.