My NaNoWriMo progress is slow this year.  I know in the past I’m normally ahead of the 1667 words per day but this year I’m trailing at 2527 total at the end of day 3.  Le sigh.  It’s not the end of the world, I know that this early on it doesn’t create a huge deficit to catch up on later, but I’m feeling generally unmotivated this year for some reason.  Part of me feels like there are normally more NaNo pep talks and things to spur you on by now, but perhaps I’m just making that up!  I know I miss the word count bars on their forums, as well as the word count widgets for posting elsewhere.  As small and seemingly unimportant as those were, they’re actually a really good push to make you write more – racing against writing buddies and other people who have word count widgets on their blogs, etc.

But, enough of that wallowing in self-unmotivation! (That’s totally a word)

I started NaNo thinking I would be writing the first book in a (so far) 2 book series that I have in mind, the first with a title choice of either Hellbound or Devil May Care – my favourite title seems to change as often as the weather so I’m hoping it’ll become more clear when it’s written.  Except that all kind of went out the window when I sat down, opened up Scrivener, and started typing a more recent novel idea of mine for a book titled Pink Mist.  It obviously wanted to be written first, so it’s wish is my command!  This is possibly the first book I’ve written where I know the title but have no name for the protagonist.  She just doesn’t want one!  I suppose as she is an assassin that anonymity is probably better for her in the long run, but I think she’s going to get stuck with a nickname (or two) whether she likes it or not.

In between writing about no-name and her shenanigans, I’ve been working a bit more on this website with updates and also setting up my Facebook “Author Page” which I’m very excited about.  Although I probably shouldn’t be as excited as I am, there’s no shoes involved after all.  You can check it out via the link below (please do 🙂 ) and hopefully “like” it, or you can get there by clicking the Facebook button over there on the right. *points*->

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Natalie-Westgate/309459942413821

Yes, it’s that time of year again!  Time for all of the planning, making sure you keep in touch with family and friends and stocking up on food and supplies.  I can’t believe the past year has flown by, it seemed like only yesterday that we were all doing this NaNoWriMo prep! 😉

Actually, I didn’t get to take part in NaNoWriMo last year.  Brian and I had only just got married a couple of months before and the America move plannng was well under way, so things were pretty hectic without adding 50,000 words into the mix.  I’m torn this year though between a couple of ideas: one that’s been in my mind for quite a long time, or one that’s a fairly recent idea but is set in the same “world” as the previous idea.  Or, I suppose, I could be a NaNoRebel and work on my manuscript that was started in NaNoWriMo 2005.  But I think something new is better, gets the ball rolling on other work that’s floating around in my brain.

This will be the first time doing NaNo in America – yep, I’ve finally moved as of 10 days ago 🙂  We’re actually off to a resort today that was Brian’s Anniversary gift for me (that we couldn’t do until after I’d moved).  It’ll be nice to get away and relax before the hectic month of November.

As well as writing the 50,000 words, I’ll be going to my first ever Thanksgiving to Brian’s family in another state.  Very exciting but I hope they won’t mind me turning up with my laptop and NaNo notes in hand hehe!

One last NaNo related(ish) note.  I’m going to be disabling comments on my blog after this weekend for a while.  I went to update my profile on the NaNo website, to add this web address in, and almost right after I did it my site is being spammed to hell.  I have this site linked on several other places and never had any issues before, but this was going from zero spam to a lot right after I posted it on my profile there 🙁  I’ll notify them, although I’m not sure what they could do about it anyway, but for now (or very soon) the comments will be disabled on here.

Back to better things, good luck to everyone taking part in November!  Just remember that every word counts, so even if you can only fit in 5 minutes of writing then take it and just write as much as you can in those few minutes.  It’ll all add up in the end 🙂  Be sure to check out the fun things on their website too!  This Nanotoon was me a few days ago 😉