Wow, I have a lot going on.

Probably too much, if I am being honest. I word 30 hours a week, I’m doing a master degree and have been given my third assignment (when the other two are not yet complete), this novel, and I am trying to keep up with my social life and support my boyfriend in running a game. One of them is going to give (if I am honest, the game is probably going, and the social life gets cut back at lot for November). We’ll have to see, but I can feeling myself getting more and more stressed, only saved by some good friends and generous applications of hugs.

I got off to a good start with NaNoWriMo, and at the end of day 7 I am at 30K. However, I have been slowing down, and I didn’t manage that 10K day one that I was aiming for. But, having said that, it was still a good first week.

My rhythm seems to have been a bit disrupted by…something. Not sure what, but I sped to 27K, and then really just slowed. This weekend has been really busy, I had to work Saturday (really hate Saturday shifts) and Sunday was IoD, so a full day of gaming (having just completed the game, I can now say, that I have packed it in, that was my last game as a ref, and I am so happy to not have that stress anymore), more than half of which I was intrinsically involved in, so couldn’t not go.

But, still got a lot of time to go. I’m pretty sure I’ll make it to 50K. Don’t know if I’ll get to my goal of 100K. It would be nice, and hopefully by just sitting down for an hour each day I’ll climb over that wall.

So, now that I’ve told you a bit about the actual words I’ve put down, I thought I would share with you my process.

Today is technology. This year, I am writing through an online software called Novlr. It’s something I discovered in it’s really early stages and I’ve been backing it (the kickstarter didn’t fund, but they continued at it anyway, just slower) for a while. I really like it, I mean I’ve discovered bugs, but I’ve been with it since alpha, and they are really good at picking up the reports. The main software is really good now, and they’ve been adding in lots and lots of features. You can now have multiple books, they have statistics pages (including a NaNoWriMo word count!), and a really minimalist UI, so you just focus on the words on the page. I’m not trying to sell it to you, just highlight why I like it and have decided to write my novel in there this year.

The particularly big reason I’m using it is that’s it’s online cloud based, so as long as I have an internet connection, I can write to it from any computer. And it has an offline mode, which blends seamlessly back into online mode when it reconnects. Cloud software is really, really good in my opinion. And I have the option to back it up to Google Drive, so everything is backed up without me doing anything 🙂

So, cloud software means that I can write on any computer. Which means work, desktop, and chromebook are all viable options. I prefer my chromebook out of all of these of course. I mean, it can’t do much, but it does internet really well, and really fast, it’s small, and light, and I can stick stickers all over it.

chromebook stickers

I’ve got a lot of NaNoWriMo stickers, and that isn’t even all of them. I like stickers. And I do like to advertise that I’m a writer.

So that’s my combination this year – Novlr + Chromebook (at least when I’m not at work).

How is everyone else doing? Both fellow NaNo writers and those of you who don’t spend November in a frenzy.