Off to the races / by Katherine Hajer

Today was the first day of NaNoWriMo, and I've already written more than I did in the first three days last year. This is actually a pretty busy November for me (clients visiting from out-of-country, family events, friends-wh0-don't-do-NaNoWriMo events), so I've been trying to get a bit ahead of the game. So far, I am, although not as much as some people on the site!

I'm continuing with the idea that there is "time to write." It's just you just have to plan for it, the same as you plan in shopping for groceries, doing the laundry, and everything else. In practical terms:
  • I made a big enough meal for four people tonight (Spanish rice, steamed broccoli, grilled chicken, organic spinach sausages) and tucked the leftovers into the fridge. With judicious packaging and freezing, and assuming I keep up my cooking schedule, I should be able to get away with no cooking at all the middle two weeks of the month, which is the NaNoWriMo stress time. Tomorrow I'm making chicken soup.

    The food thing is important to me because last year when I did this I wound up living almost exclusively on take-away from the local Chinese Canadian diner. They make lovely diner food, but no-one's supposed to live on it morning, noon, and night for days on end. Seriously.
  • So far I've managed to stay off the internet long enough to actually get work done. This is a lot harder than last year, where I had the excuse of not having bothered to set up a wireless connection on my router. This year is something else again.
At any rate, it's all so far, so good. I'm not following the outline I wrote that well, but I'm still glad I wrote it, because it made me think through the world I was creating. It will be interesting to see what state things are in at the end of the month.