Day 1

 We are now over twelve hours into National Novel Writing Month in the UK, and honestly, it still does not feel normal. I was too tired last night really and it honestly felt like the world was conspiring against the whole of the competition as other people talked about coffee machines breaking and I realised that I had bought a hot chocolate that tasted like drinking a full mug of melted chocolate. It was far too rich and even the attempt to make it into a mocha so that I could get some caffeine and stay awake was all in vein. Not meeting in person was always going to be hard. Having to plan what I am doing around my parents' lives as well was always going to be hard, especially given that I have to think about meal times and what in the kitchen will not make too much noise and too much mess, and the volumes of particular keyboards as opposed to just which ones are most beneficial to my writing speed. (That would be the loud ones, apparently!!)

Where it all started going wrong last night though was the lack of a nap and the changing of the pizza. 

I have a routine for October 31st and it works. I go and buy Hallowe'en candy with no intention of sharing it, I get a cheap hot chocolate stick that will not be too sickly and I have my pizza that is cooked in twelve minutes because that works. I have said before that it does not taste great, but it fits into the routine and it works. Last night, my pizza was supposed to be in the oven for about twenty five minutes, so I had to adjust my nap time, I could not get myself to nap and then I was far too tired to write for the same midnight to three in the morning shift which has helped me to get to more than a couple of twenty thousand word days and honestly, it sucked. I was also writing at the dinning table, no external keyboard and just clicking away on the Pixel's keyboard and having to hit the backspace button constantly, because for some reason, I make so many more typos on this keyboard than my gaming keyboard and I do not know why. 

Trying to nap was hard as well, because I was obsessed with the fact that last year I overslept my alarm by about half an hour and it really threw me off. I know it might not look like that when I then still bashed my way through twenty thousand words on the first day, but it was honestly less than ideal circumstances. The last day definitely came in at twenty thousand a lot easier, because of planning and preparation of everything but what I was going to write. 

Anyway, that was the lengthy babble about how it is going and, as with everything else in November, it is unedited, so it might  be a load of crap.