It's day nine, and I'm on two thousand, eight hundred and seventy words.

A quick calculation might tell you that that means I'm quite behind schedule.  This may be my worst year yet.  There's still plenty of time to get back on track though!  Right..?!

I've only spent any time writing on about three or four of those nine days so far.  But I have been to a conference, organised some SocieTea events, read bits and pieces related to my PhD, cleaned my flat, watched a few episodes of Arrested Development, learnt some new crochet stitches and started crocheting a hat, and baked a lot.

I did meet the Edinburgh NanoBeans and had a great time at the write-in in Pulp Fiction last Wednesday.  We may have spent more time collaboratively developing the backstory of Pedro the Guide Bear (a troubled young grizzly attired in an Elvis costume and boater hat who constantly struggles against his estranged father, Yogi, the leader of an organised crime syndicate) than actually writing our novels though.

I have learnt one particularly important thing this year, that's never come up before.

Talking ideas through with other people is really useful!  

Last Sunday, Beth helped me explain the absence of a main character's mother and fix a potential looming plot hole with one fell swoop.  Telling Kit about the various civilisations and layout of the land in my world allowed him to pick holes and question things, raising, and partially solving, some things that didn't make sense or yet more potential looming plotholes.  And Caitlin (a new NanoBeans writing buddy) pointed out that just because a character had been anticipating reading a letter for the last thousand words, didn't necessarily mean the letter had to contain anything interesting... it could be a disappointment to the character... which helped, as I hadn't figured out what the letter said, and all of a sudden the character was opening it.

I sure wish blogging about Nano counted towards the word count.