So, my tastes are a little more expensive than Julie Andrews’ (although I’m very fond of paper packages arriving in the mail as well) but I’m currently enjoying my latest acquisition. I drove to Leeds to pick him up last night and 90 minutes later, I’m the proud owner of a gorgeous brand spanking new Audi in what’s termed Condor Grey. Whether or not that means it’s going to enjoy feasting on small dead things, is yet to be seen, but watch out bunnies and pheasants in the wilds of North Yorkshire because we’re doing the school run tomorrow night.

Jeff is remarkably fun to drive, it has to be said. We had a good play on the way home and he’s got a lovely vroomy engine with a bit of kick to it. I can’t wait to let him stretch his legs a bit on something other than motorway - twisty country roads, here we come.

NaNoWriMo is nearly done for another year. I’ve rattled off 47,000 words of first draft so far this month in what looks like is going to be an 80,000 word story. It’s very much a draft, but some of the bits have made me giggle out loud. I’ve discovered all sorts of fun characters that I hadn’t planned and, although sometimes it’s been a huge struggle with all the pressures from work, it is being hilarious fun to write as well. I should be finished the NaNo challenge tonight - the trick is to keep on rattling those words out and get the whole first draft done before Christmas. That would be a real achievement.

Here’s hoping±

It’s that time of year again, and I’m blasting through the first draft of a story that’s been eating my brain for the best part of a year. It’s nice to finally get it out of my head and see it coming to life on paper. I’m half way through the NaNo word count and about a third of the way through the novel, so it’s definitely happening.

As you’d expect, writing at this sort of speed, the quality is pretty uneven. There are some glorious bits that really make me laugh and I know they’re going to make it through to the final draft, but there are also some hideous bits (including the bit I’m finishing up at the moment) where I suddenly realise that I’ve got the character’s motivations all wrong, they’re total cardboard morons and deserve to be incinerated at once.

I’m going to doing an initial redraft over Christmas to knock it into readable shape, but I’ve got this tingly sense of ‘this is going to be something good’ that stops me from hitting the ‘delete’ button.