Blogging NaNoWriMo 2014: Draft Complete

Due to a sudden burst of determination, I completed my NaNoWriMo draft within November, with it coming in at 59,325 words, 3,541 of those written last night. Most of those, to be fair, were written during a rushed hour where my determination overtook my sense and I just had to finish it by the arbitrary deadline.

Overall, this goes down as another successful NaNo, though it still doesn't feel that way. However, it's another first draft in the can and I already have ideas about the alterations which need to be made. One of my secondary characters flip-flops throughout the novel and I need to work out how accurate that is or whether she was just dancing to my tune. As well as that, some of the care home residents emerged as much stronger characters than I'd anticipated and I should really cling onto them in the second draft. More about my future writing plans later in the week though.

November was tricky, as I knew it would be. I haven't been feeling very bright and most days I've either burst into tears or sat staring despondent at the wall for an hour. Add to that the fact that I've been battling with the final edits of my thesis for the last two weeks and you've got a pretty draining month. I spent most of last week in a cafe with a 190 page thesis and marker pen in front of me because doing that work at home with my father still off sick from work is nigh on impossible. This blog has suffered this month, I've got some freelancing work ongoing and there's some proofreading I need to do for something else which I'll tell you all about shortly. When I see it written down like that, I'm not surprised I've woken up to the first day of December with a stonking headache. Nevertheless, I won... Here's my celebratory banner and one of my favourite songs of the moment, guaranteed to make me sing and smile - for a few minutes at least.