DarrellHardy.com

This is the last full week of November, the home stretch for NaNoWriMo, and I’ve got 44,000 words in the bank. They’re not all good words: Many are mispelled, grammatically incorrect, or strung together in sentences that would my tenth-grade English teacher weep. But there 44,000 of them, and that’s all that matters.

Only 6000 more by next Monday to “win” NaNoWriMo.

That might happen. We’re going to be on the road for the next five days. While we’re bringing the laptop computer, but I suspect the moment the car stops moving we’ll be asleep, up to our ears in joyful family festivities, or both. And that’s okay. There’s no prize for winning, aside from the glow of satisfaction. And I can get that the first week of December, if that’s when I get around to finishing the thing.

I should point out how wonderful my beautiful literary agent wife has been through all of this. She’s been extremely supportive, even going so far as to take the girls out for two afternoons of fun last weekend, leaving me home alone to write for a while on Saturday and Sunday. I made huge strides those days, and owe her a debt of thanks… A debt that can only be repaid by taking the girls out for two afternoons of fun some weekend.

On the NaNoWiMo forums, I found a post recommending this awesome site: Write Or Die.

The site is not a text editor, but it has a field where you can type. And if you stop typing for more than a few second (a range you can edit), the site reminds you to keep writing. This reminder may come in the form of gentle pop-up, an annoying sound effect, or (if you’re hard core) deleting your words before your very eyes.

Like many, I find it hard to turn off my internal editor and just put words on the page. Which makes Write or Die a great tool. For anyone else in my boat (welcome!) I can’t recommend this site enough. I expect to be using it quite a bit the rest of the month.