Has anyone else just started NaNoWriMo? I can’t help but wonder if the main reason behind this activity is simply to prove that writers are insane by trying to write 50,000 words in the month of November. Despite this obvious madness, writers still seem to be doing this in droves.

What is great is that for the first time in my life I’m considered a “rebel”. Who would have thought that writing boring old non-fiction would ever be considered a rebellious activity?

On the first day of November I sat down at my computer, ready to continue on from an inspiring introduction that was written months ago. I soon found myself staring at the proverbial blank page with a corresponding blank brain. I had thought that starting would be easy! That if I was going to get stuck anywhere it would be somewhere in the middle or towards the end! I could not have been more wrong!

Instead, I sat there looking at the blank screen trying to figure out how to keep going from the text I had already written. I eventually gave up and spent the evening berating myself for every silly little minuscule thing I did wrong, as insane writers do.

10pm came around and I was lying in bed about to turn the light off on perhaps the most disappointing day of my life. (I’m over-dramatising, of course – my life has involved hundreds of days that have been much more disappointing!) Then I had the great idea of throwing away my old introduction and starting fresh. And I did! There I was lying in the dark typing my book into my 5-inch phone with one finger. It’s a bit like running a race on one leg, but then suddenly the words started to flow and in half an hour and I had written 500 fresh words – an entirely new introduction.

Then it dawned on me – the logical and scientific reason behind this was that the writing fairy who was on duty a few months ago was not the writing fairy that was on duty now. With a new writing fairy, I was now effectively writing a whole different book from the one I started months ago. And perhaps even  am a different person too?

My prayer to the writing fairies is this: Please can I have the same fairy for the whole month of November? If you are doing weekly shifts I’m going to be in big trouble. Maybe now that I am feeding this particular fairy she might stick around, if only for the food?

Instead of procrastinating writing my blog, I’m now off to write my NaNoWriMo book and make breakfast for my favourite fairy.

500 words down, only 49,500 words to go, and I’m already behind the daily target of 1,667 words per day. But I’m not worried. I have my secret NaNoWriMo weapon – a tiny phone and one finger that can easily churn out 2000 words in 2 hours per day.