It's November, which means its National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. We're now 12 days in and I'm a little behind my target word count. Last year I sat out on our deck in the quiet every night after the washing up was done and pumped out 1700 words on a story that had been percolating for a very long time. The scenes literally wrote themselves. This year, I am struggling. The words and scenes were really stilted and (dare I say) boring when writing from the heroine's point of view. Switched to the hero's point of view and very quickly reached my 1667 words for the day. Major revision of my heroine on day five. Day ten, the man who's missing popped in to give me a scene. On day one, I thought he was probably dead. Day eleven was good to me as a result of this revelation. But on day twelve tragedy struck..... My Dana, longtime writing companion, is faltering and expert advice suggests it may be terminal. Purchased in 2007, the support unit used words like "Such outdated technology" and "Not worth fixing". Those of you who don't know the Dana or Alphasmart (Alphie) they are a range of very robust, very basic word processors with auto on and direct to your file, and a tiny screen that makes editing almost impossible. Perfect for writing dirty first drafts. Even more perfect for slotting into your handbag and slipping it out any time you are waiting for anything to get some words down. Once you're home you connect to your computer via cable, hit send and it adds all those words to your manuscript. That's the part I love the most. Watching it hand over the words. Luckily I was able to retrieve everything from the Dana, and I now have a work-around to let me continue to use it until it dies altogether. Please, God of Technology, don't take it until after the 30th of November. Are you doing NaNo this year? How are you going? Comments are closed.
|
Fiona Greene AuthorWhen you set out on a journey and night falls, that's when you will discover the stars." Archives
November 2022
Categories
All
|