Nano update: How're you going? Life has well and truly gotten itself in the way for me. Though I have managed to keep noodling along, I'm far behind where I planned to be - my catch-up week didn't really happen, I was too busy being ill and chasing other things up, and with seven days to write 35,000 words, I'm no longer fussed about the deadline. I can write eight thousand words in a day. I've done so before - the last novel I finished I wrote the last two chapters in a flurry of 9000 words in one day. But it took me most of the day to do it, and I have things like work to attend, exams to write, games stories to plan and lectures to prepare. 

I don't consider it as 'failing' Nano, though - and if you're in a similar boat to me, neither should you. The only thing that matters are the words you did write, not the ones you didn't. The important thing is what you have achieved through Nano. Personally, I've filled in the blanks at the beginning of my novel, and worked out what on earth's happening in the first half of the dreaded middle section - to me, that's a pretty solid achievement, I'm happy with that. My goal for the rest of November is to have written those scenes that I've planned out, and plan out the second half of the middle.

Writing tools and tips from other people

I've been sent two LifeHacker posts about writing. One of them's their usual collection of "Top X Blanks, as suggested by our readers", in this case, the Blank being low-distraction writing software. Personally, it's not the software itself that I tend to be distracted with - it's all the other things I could be doing with my computer, or the things on my desk, or in another room, etc. But others may find the ability to fiddle with character profiles or whatever worse than a man with a treetrimmer next door.

Their other article - 10 tips for better writing - I have some disagreements with. First and foremost that it should more aptly be named "10 rather randomly selected suggestions that might work for some people written as if they'll work for everyone". If you're including scheduling, planning, grammar, journalling, motivation and research in the one list, then either you've no idea about your subject matter, or you were really in a hurry.

They do have some good notions - their suggestions for motivation, reading widely, journalling your progress and recognising your own errors is sound advice - although probably more useful if taken a step further than they did. Knowing what mistakes you often make in story and character will save you far more work than common spelling mistakes.

But Numbers 1 and 2 especially I think is a matter of personal taste and opinion. When I'm stuck, I find the best thing is to just write the next bit any old how, in any direction. It usually ends up being not where I wanted to go, but in the process of discovering that, I figure out where I do want to go, and usually some other ideas as well. If I waited until I had it all planned out, all the fun would be gone. I'd know how the story ended. And the key of a real story is in the details, the little twists and turns that you can only discover as you're writing the thing, not planning it. So sure, outline things if you want to, but don't feel that you have to.

As for scheduling, I've never been able to keep a writing schedule. Possibly because my life has never had a regular schedule, but I'm just not a schedule person. If I write down that I'm going to do something at 9am, and something else at 3, you can bet I'll be trying to do them both together at 5pm. Or possibly tomorrow. The closest I can get is to make a list of things to do in the order I'm going to do them, and then I'll stick to it 90% of the time. Well, maybe 75.

I find my best writing times are the times I didn't expect to be writing. When my doctor's appointment's been moved half an hour, or the service guys are going to take an extra hour on my car - whip out my laptop and write. So I find their rule of "you mustn't write outside your scheduled time" to be ludicrous and unrealistic. Life does not run to a schedule, and life is what you have to fit around when you're trying to write. It's hard enough as it is without handing yourself a golden excuse of "oops, I missed my writing time, oh well, no writing for me today". Pah. By all means, make yourself a schedule if you're a schedule person. But don't ever tell yourself that you're not allowed to write. Unless, of course, you're doing so for reverse psychology - that can actually work. But preventing yourself from salvaging otherwise-wasted moments for writing time is not doing yourself any favours.