NaNoWriMo....Day 5!

This is just a quick update, to let you all know that I'm still alive and drinking lots of tea to get me through NaNoWriMo ;)...

It's day 5 of NaNoWriMo, and I'm pleased to say that I've passed last year's word count - hooray! Not that that was very difficult, mind you - last year I wrote about 1,000 words then gave up. This year, I've currently written over 8,600 words :), which makes me very happy! I was hoping to break through the 10,000 word barrier over the weekend, but I went to see a friend on Sunday and ended up hanging out with her later than I thought I would. Not that I mind - it was nice to get out of the house after writing all day Saturday!

What I've written so far is a complete mess. I'm not afraid to admit it - it's appalling. If I was writing this normally in any other month, I would have burst into tears, deleted everything, then thrown my laptop out of the window long ago. But this November, I am determined to turn off my inner editor and just write - it's so hard though - I'll think that I've managed to ignore what my inner editor is saying, but then I'll realise that I haven't written anything for five minutes, because I'm searching for the perfect way to word a particular sentence....but I just have to remember that NaNoWriMo isn't the time for editing and getting everything perfect - it's about writing.

So that's what I'm going to focus on this week - simply getting the words down onto paper. There'll be plenty of time in December for me to edit and rewrite to my heart's content, but for now I'm just going to box up all my doubts and shove them into a dark and dusty corner of my mind...

I also received some unexpected news this morning - when I turned up to my first class of the day, the classroom was empty and the teachers were stripping everything off the walls. Turns out some of the kids are suffering from the 'hands, foot and mouth disease' - don't you just love it when things get lost in translation? I'm pretty sure that means chicken pox...but anyway, the whole class is off school for the next two weeks, which means I now have even more free time in the morning. Don't get me wrong, I hope all ,y cute little Chinese pupils get well soon, and I can't wait to see them again, but I'm not gonna lie - two weeks worth of free mornings, right when NaNoWriMo is running (when I actually only have 3 weeks instead of 4 to write 50,000 words, as my sister is coming to see me at the end of November), - kinda seems like a very odd blessing in disguise ;)....

So, how's your NaNoWriMo coming along?? I'd love to hear what you're up to!