JulNoWriMo day 1!

Week one write in!
Location: Borders, Perth city.
Borders gets a rating of */***** as a write-in location. This is because they only had two power points available, the tables were at a really, awkwardly low height and my coffee was truly awful. Borders - great for books, not for coffee! 
Attendees: four (including myself).
Word-count: 2,553.

I accidentally stayed up until 12am, and figured since I was up I might as well start writing. I thrashed out 1,500 words between 12 and 1am. I wrote a good deal more on the train to the write-in, and a bit while I was there. I also realised that I'm one of those people who, if they have an idea or a scene playing out in their heads, can write it down no matter what's going on around them!

Today's write-in was very social and conversational, not a lot of actual work got done. But it was really good  - even if I got told to stop writing at one point! One of our attendees was really sick and had jumped on the JulNo bandwagon at the last minute. Today she bought a notebook and pen, and used said pen to write her JulNo title in the notebook. Considering the state she was in, and that she was even there, that was a huge achievement for her. The other participant had changed her idea at the last minute and wanted to do a bit more planning before she dove in. Elimy is a desk writer, so we basically talked plot, inspirational authors, good writing books and I read a bit of her novel while she looked at my synopsis and character profiles. She's had her draft properly bound. It was both daunting and inspirational, as 50,000 words is the most I've ever written on a finished OR unfinished fiction piece. Elimy's first draft is a lot longer than that! She's been working on it for a couple of years, which is definitely something I admire.

On the train home I realised I could have done a lot more research into the literary influences I wanted  to reference in the book. I like to get my facts at least passable when I'm writing, but now I'll have to make sure I don't waste too much writing time doing research.

All in all, day one was really good. I'm a bit tired from my unintentional late night, but I'm really happy with my progress, and I had a great time catching up with my lovely writing buddies. I'm hoping next week's write-in will bring a few more attendees. Fingers crossed that I'll still be on track, plot and word-count wise by then!

Plans for next month: actually start doing what I started doing this blog for in the first place (that sentance wins the tangled award...) I started this blog, originally, to read and review all of the Popular Penguins. You know, the ones with the orange covers like this:

Anyway, there's well over 200 of them now, and I was a little depressed about having to tackle it all by myself. I mentioned this to Elimy today and she said she'd be more than happy to do half of them on her blog! So once August rolls around, keep your eyes peeled for that. It'll be fun. I'll have to learn to right neutral reviews about books I don't like, haha (I'm looking at you, The Great Gatsby).

I've gotta go do washing and other boring grown-up things now! There's another non-JulNo post scheduled for tomorrow, don't worry, I promised not to bore you with my literary insanity for the whole month :)

Jade.