 It's week one of NaNoWriMo! For the uninitiated, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month also known as Nano to those familiar. The goals is to write 50k words by the end of the month. I've participated several times and, honestly, it's a rough journey. 50k in a month is a disciplined and intense goal for many people, me included. Let's talk details though.... What am I writing? Book 2 of the Sophie Stearns Adventure Series. It's called The Case of Too Many Albins and it's the conclusion to events that happened in Book 1, Sophie & the G-man, which came out this fall, I can't wait to get Too Many Albins out there. It's going to be a wild ride! What tools am I using? You may be able to see from my messy desk picture that I am using a tool called Write or Die. I love this because it forces me to just write. And if I stop, there are consequences! Sometimes it's a screen full of creepy crawlies, sometimes it's loud noises ... your screen turns red ... these are all vaguely unpleasant thing that you want to avoid. It also celebrates your wins. When you reach your goal (say 500 words in 15 minutes) you get trumpet fanfare! I also use Novlr for the actual story writing/construction. For those who have heard of Scrivener, this is like a light, easier to use version that is cloud based. Novlr allows me to move my chapters around as I see fit which works well for my writing style. The last tool I use is Pacemaker Press which is essentially a project tracker. During November, I can use the NaNoWriMo site to track novel progress but the rest of the time, I use Pacemaker. I like it because it has a few more bells and whistles than the basic Nano tracker and I can build a couple of plans so I know whats coming up next. I included my plan for Too Many Albins below for those who want to keep track with me.  Lastly. Let's talk about this desk. I work in a little corner of my living room area on a vintage drop leaf table. It's a cute little red table I picked up from a friend some years back and I don't mind if it gets paint splattered or a little dirty. Every Saturday I clean my desk off and by Tuesday it already looks like this. I paint here, I work here, I write here. I even sometimes eat dinner here. Current contents: Several to-do lists, my favorite mug half-full with cold coffee (darn it), 2 very dirty cups of water, a couple of paintings, a 2" hole punch, a bottle of my favorite fountain pen ink and pen, my pan set paints, some lip balm, my favorite notebook and my Let's Make Art painting towel. You can also spot the arm I use when filming time-lapse paintings and the ring light that gives the videos that lovely warm glow. Obviously, this is not a comprehensive list.
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