Having heard a few people are having problems with writing for NaNoWriMo, I thought I’d let you know a few things I have discovered this week.

1)  If you are writing on something that doesn’t count your words for you, you can use a free word counter that you can find at  http://wordcounter.net/ , or as an app on the Google Store, Amazon’s App Store if you are using a Kindle, or iTunes. You can either write in the app, or just copy and paste from wherever you are writing.

2)  If you don’t have a word processor, you could always write in the cloud. Google Docs is the best way to do that as you can use it anywhere and it automatically saves your work for you.  You can access it from everywhere (you’ll have to sign-in with your Google account – it will guide you through creating one if you don’t have one.)

(There are a couple of extra hoops to go through if you are working on a Kindle Fire because the Google Drive App won’t work on it. You can either use email to send it to your device, or send the document using the ‘Send to Kindle’ app.

• If you want to email it, log on to Google Drive and drag the document you want to the desktop or any directory you want. Then just email the file to your Kindle address (the one that ends in @kindle.com).Then, next time you connect the Kindle to a Wi-Fi network, the document should appear in the doc list.
• To send it to your device instead, open the ‘Send to Kindle’ app, and drag the document onto the application’s window. Click ‘Send’ and the document should appear the next time you connect the Kindle Fire to a Wi-Fi-network.)

3) If you want to write on your phone when you have a free minute or two (and yes, I’m afraid that does mean leaving FB alone for a while), you could use Evernote. It syncs everything everywhere you have it loaded, so you could start a document on a laptop on Evernote, then continue it when you are out and about on your phone, then finish it back on the laptop again.

Finally, this last one isn’t really a tip to help you write, more a ‘Huh? Really?’ moment I had when I heard about it in the week. I don’t want you to obsess about it, and in fact, try not to worry about it at all when you are writing for NaNo as it will take up too much of your time. Just know it is there if you ever do need it.

Native English speakers automatically know which order to put adjectives before a noun if there is more than one. You can tell when it sort of sounds wrong. For instance, if you were to talk about a gorgeous, little, tortoise-shell cat – great! But how about a tortoise-shell, little, gorgeous cat. Sounds weird doesn’t it?

There is actually a rule about the specific order they go in? Who knew?

So, here goes…. the order is opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose, noun – phew!

If you were to talk about a pretty, big, old, square, yellow, Dutch, wooden, hay barn, that is fine, but mess up the order and you’d sound strange. To be fair, you’d sound a bit strange using 8 adjectives in a row, but hey!

Now I’ve told you, you can immediately forget it, and get back to writing – don’t let it hold you back.

Let me know in the comments how you’re getting on at NaNo, and if you’re doing better than me!