Although I’m still banging on this week with Nano, as with so much that is planned, things have gone somewhat awry over the course of week 3. After the giddying highs of week 2 (“Yay! I have an actual scene, let’s see what happens”), I’ve come to a bit of a standstill.

This has been mostly due to life taking over where fiction leaves off. From a poorly younger daughter, who was up all night on Sunday evening (thus, so was Mummy!), to broken stove glass and the chickens making a freely-ranging run for it, events have been conspiring to keep me from my laptop, and I’ve stalled at just under 23,000 words. By this point, I should be knocking on the door of 30k, so I’ve obviously got a bit of catching up to do.

However, I do anticipate a bit of a surge now we’re heading away from chaos and into the second half of week 3. My youngest is on the mend, some new stove glass has been ordered and the chickens’ wings have been clipped to stop them causing trouble in places that aren’t my garden. Once I’ve tidied the house tomorrow, hopefully got a bit more sleep tonight and generally caught up with school and home related stuff, I might just get the chance to crack on and crank out a few more thousand words.

Of course, the word count might still suffer sightly as I’m due to lead a session with the Bristol Teachers As Writers group on Saturday, so I need to finish off my notes for that, and then the following weekend I’m off to London for the Mumsnet publishing conference, so I need to make the final tweaks to Far From the Tree at some point next week so it’s in tip top shape to take with me. And then there’s the children, the animals, the teaching and a husband somewhere under the debris…

But I will get to 50k on or before the 30th. This time I’m absolutely certain. Now, off to gird my loins…