Sorry about no Sunday Sesh this week. I’m still not overly good at this pre-planning thing. I’m blaming Nanowrimo, since you’re not supposed to plan too far ahead in order to get the best experience possible.
However,
Unplanned visitors + planned visitors + housework + reno’s = Full house and no time for blogging.
The simplest solution would have been for me to do the post early, and then just add the beer review before I posted. Not for me this business though. What if what I wrote on (say) Wednesday for the post was no longer relevant on Sunday? I’d have to completely re-write the post anyway.
I thought I could sneak in a quick post, review my beer and just write some crap about whatever was happening that interested me and then go be sociable.
It certainly did not work out that way.
Plus, it’s the day before Nanowrimo starts, my work week starts tomorrow and I’ll have visitors until Wednesday. I am NOT going to get my head-start I was hoping for.
On top of that, we have the tupperware party and a going away party for friends in two weeks that wipes out almost a full day. I have the next weekend free, and then we’re in Brisbane both weekends after that.
So I was wondering how this month was going to work with such an unproductive start and so much other stuff on. For a few days I tossed around just dropping Nano until next year, and I also tossed around dropping absolutely everything else except my real job.
I’ve decided that even though this month is one of the most hectic we’ve had all year, I’m still doing Nano because no matter how much I could have tried to get a fully free month, something would have come up to throw a spanner in the works.
So this is how it’s all going to go down this month. Bear in mind these are your rules as much as they are mine, and I apologise in advance for dropping off the radar for the next 30 days.
Things I am NOT doing (or restricting to next to nothing) for the next month:
Answering the phone – I’m giving Wifey my mobile phone when I’m at home. From tomorrow, Wifey will be my secretary after 5pm. All texts and phone calls will go through her. I can call and text to my heart’s content between 8.30am and 5pm, and because I’m at my real job between those hours, it means not very much at all. So unless you or someone else is dying, you’re going to have to get through my secretary first.
Facebooking and blog-reading – I’m restricting my facebooking and blog-reading, and will only allow myself to jump on if I reach my word counts for each day. If I’m behind from the previous day, I’ll need to catch up on those words as well as do that day’s word count before I can access the net. I will, however, post a link to the blog whenever I post. If you catch me on facebook, and there’s no post on the blog, flick me a message and ask what I’m doing on there. Alternatively, poke me and tell me to “GET WRITING DAMMIT!”
Watching TV – No TV. Not even the news in the afternoon. I’ll be setting the timers tonight to tape everything I would normally watch. There are no if’s or but’s on this rule. Even if I hit my word counts every day, I won’t be watching anything on the idiot box. Sitting down in front of the TV in December, catching up on all my shows, will be my reward for getting through the next 30 days, regardless of whether I hit that 50k or not.
Restricted Twitter – Why restricted and not just banned? Because I want to see how the other #nanowrimo’s are doing since it’s my first year. They’ve been getting pretty excited lately, and so far I’ve just watched and not tweeted too much. I may get in on the conversation as the month progresses though. I’ll see how things go.
Staying off the internet – This one’s a tricky one. I want to get onto the Nano forums, but I will only allow myself to do that after I’ve hit my word counts. I will only get online for that though. Any research I think I may have to do for the novel I’ll keep track of in a notebook, and if the Nano novel turns out to be ok, I’ll sort it out then. I can get a bit of an online fix to read newspapers etc at work before I get started and at lunch-time, so this won’t feel too restrictive.
There are probably other things I’ll be giving up or restricting over the next 30 days, but those are the major ones.
Since this post is quite long enough, I’ll leave over the things I will be doing during Nano for the next post, when I give my first report from the trenches.
Until then, I’m going to try to relax and not think about what lies ahead.