Word count: 2,629.

I managed to get myself off to a very solid start on NaNoWriMo – or NaNoWrito as it seems to be known in my house – for this year. It took me an hour or so to write my very first word though. I sat down about 11:30am with an espresso and two pieces of vegemite toast and spent the next little while organising the notes and thoughts that I’d jotted down over the last month. It was probably about 1pm before I fired up Microsoft Word, piss-farted about for a little while creating a cool header for the document, then wrote those first two words: “Chapter One” (I love that that counts towards the word count!!)

For someone that finds procrastinating about writing the easiest thing in the world to do, I surprised myself that I was able to sit still for a long enough stretch of time to punch out the first few hundred words. It took about an hour to do 500 words, at which time I thought it was a great time to start bragging to my girlfriend and to make some lunch. I got back into it easily again, and by 5pm, I had written my first 2000 words. And what’s better than that was, I didn’t think those 2000 words were a steaming pile of poo. Now approaching midnight, I did another hour or so of writing to get my word count past 2500 for the first day.

Luckily, the start of NaNoWriMo beginning on a Saturday works in nicely with the Melbourne Cup, a public holiday here in Melbourne on Tuesday. So with a day of annual leave used up for Monday, I have 4 days to get into a solid rhythm with this writing business. My goal (which I’m well on track for at the moment) is to reach 10,000 words by the end of Tuesday. It might take a bit of time, but it’ll be worth it. I’ve got a few weekends away this month – one to Sydney for a friend’s birthday, and another to Shepparton to support my sister do the half-Ironman. So I need to get as many spare words under my belt as I can.