Kate Bohdanowicz

It’s taken me a while to post. First I was going to write about my anxiety and then I was going to pontificate once more on the minefield that is teaching. (Please note, these two arenas of my life are not mutually exclusive).

But then I decided to write about writing. We’re easing into November and that means NaNoWriMo month. For the uninitiated, it stands for National Novel Writing Month and the aim is to write a novel (or at 50,000 words, a novella) in 30 days. I’m sure it’s great for those who need to kickstart the writing process but bashing out 8,000 words or day, with little time to think (or work or sleep for that matter) would put me off writing for life.

I aim for little and often. I only write (whisper it) around 250 words a day but that’s pretty much every day, or at least five days out of seven. Occasionally life gets in the way and sometimes I just don’t feel like it. I started with 500 words a day with the intention of finishing my book in seven months (I wrote about this here) but struggled and settled on 250 words. It’s pants isn’t it? Hardly anything. Yet I plough on and eventually it comes together.

So, after 15 months, I’ve finished the first draft of my second novel. It’s about lookalikes. The completion date coincided with receiving the twentysomething rejection for my first novel, which is set in a newspaper. I sent it out to agents in 2012 and then left it and got a second wind a few months ago. Alas, no takers. 

Now I’ve got to edit the book and then, because I’m a sucker for punishment, I’ll send it out to all the literary agents that rejected the first one.

So, good luck to all those doing NaNoWriMo. I doubt you'll have the time but if anyone would like to update me on how they're getting on, I'd love to hear from you.