how to write

For those of us who normally just slink off and write what we want, when we want, NaNoWriMo can cause a bit of stress. Good stress! But stress, nevertheless. I like the pressure of forcing myself to write a certain amount of words, although I’m not sure my family is so keen! (I might possibly get a little worked up or stroppy when I am behind, only mildly of course!?), but I spectacularly tanked at the beginning of NaNo this year, so I had to hide away and catch up for everyone’s sanity! I’m more or less on target now, but whether you have managedRead More →

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. GoogleRead More →

It can be daunting to think of writing 50,000 words when you are faced with a completely blank page, and on the first day of NaNoWriMo that’s what we’ve all got. Last year, many of the sprints and challenges that are up on the NaNoWriMo site helped me a lot, so I’ve created a little challenge game for us all to see if it will make it a little less painless to start. We’re aiming for at least 1,667 words a day, so hopefully this will get us there quicker. All you need is a die (or just the ability to choose a number randomlyRead More →

I was reminded recently that it’s not just me that struggles to find time to write, we’re mostly all suffering from the same problem. Today’s world is busy, with so many things trying to compete for our time. It can be difficult to turn off notifications for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, children (OK, maybe we can’t turn off the last one, although occasionally a mute button would be nice!) But if you want to write that book you’ve been talking about for years, the time is coming when you are just going to have to. It is coming up to November – which means NaNoWriMo. IfRead More →