Counting Down the Days by Fiona Lloyd

            It’s that time of year again: already it seems like people have been talking about it for weeks. I promised myself that this year I would be more organised and start my preparations well in advance, but it still looks like I’ll be doing stuff at the last minute. Now that I can count down in days, it’s beginning to feel real.

It's far too early to be thinking about this...

            And no, I’m not talking about Christmas. At the moment, my thoughts are full of NaNoWriMo, which runs for the whole month of November. I took part for the first time last year, and was amazed at how beneficial I found it (although I need to be honest at this point and explain that I didn’t get anywhere close to their suggested target of 50,000 words).

            What was most helpful for me was simply the fact that I had given myself permission to prioritise my writing. Some days, I wrote before work, or sat with my laptop in the car while waiting for an after school club to start. I realised it was easier to avoid settling down to an evening of watching rubbish on the telly when I knew that my online word-count needed a boost.

I'm not sure I've got many words left!

            It would be nice to think – having discovered all these extra snippets of time when I could put pen to paper – that I could have continued at the same rate once December arrived. This didn’t happen: however, eleven-and-a-half months later, I know that I’ve still written far more over the last year than I've done in previous years. I've completed the first draft of the novel I was working on last November, and I’m busy culling adverbs and other unnecessary / over-used words with a ruthless determination. 

            So now I’m gearing up for this year’s attempt, and wondering if I can match (or even exceed) my 2014 total of 20,527 words … would anyone care to join me?

(PS. You can find me on NaNoWriMo as Grace Foster, with a picture of a pair of flowery Doc Marten boots next to my name.)

Fiona Lloyd works part-time as a music teacher, and serves on the worship-leading team at her local church. She enjoys writing short stories, and is working on her first novel. Fiona self-published a violin tutor book in 2013, and blogs at www.fjlloyd.wordpress.com. She is married with three grown-up children. Fiona is ACW's membership secretary.