NaNoWriMo - Day 26

Number One Competitor: 50,363 (NaNo wants 43,333)

Coops: Did I mention I was ALREADY FINISHED.

No. 1's justification/excuse: Some people have to work for a living. Good on you for beating the clock. 4 days early is pretty impressive and with the quality of work you have done extremely well. We'll lay down better ground rules next year.

No. 1's lame rating: 0

NaNoWriMo - Day 25

Number One Competitor: 46,093 (NaNo wants 41,667)

Coops: Finished

No. 1's justification/excuse: Too busy. Pfffffttt.

No. 1's lame rating: 9 (Edit, reduced to 4. Late word count advancement missed 'last call')

NaNoWriMo - Day 24

No. 1 Competitor: 46,093 (NaNo wants 40,000)

Coops: FINISHED

Justification/excuse: So nice to be finished and getting on with important stuff, like watching the stock market eat our money and surfing the net.

Lame rating: 0

Client Fishing - An E-book

I have recently reviewed an e-book, Client fishing: the no-shit guide to finding great clients, released by Impress: clear communication Pty Ltd. (Disclosure: the company is co-owned by my sister and her partner but she’s not paying me for this plug).

If you are a freelancer, or a small business that sells services, this guide will be invaluable to help you break through the marketing hype, double-talk and general confusion involved with finding clients.

The sub-title of the book (no-shit guide) gives a hint to the writers’ clear, conversational writing style – they walk the talk and provide practical ideas and information that can be easily absorbed and understood.

‘Impress’ demystifies the client personae; clients are people just like you. Get to know them, don’t just push your marketing efforts onto them.

Learn from real experiences. Suzanne and Bruce from Impress show how to get your small business off the ground and work through problematic areas of finding great clients, keeping them happy and expanding their horizons with easy-to-understand advice.

Their manual is currently available for download at a very reasonable AUD$18 (+GST for Australian buyers): http://www.impress-cc.com.au/e-books.html

NaNoWriMo - Day 23

Finished at 12:13pm.

Stopped in the middle of a sentence and banished the file for later, (much later), consideration, (and mass deletions).

Number One Competitor: 44,600 (NaNo wants 38,333). Still busting her arse and maintaining her strict requirements of delivering a readable, completely finished, publishable piece of work.

Coops: 50,019. (NaNo can get stuffed).

Justification/excuse: Next year will involve planning. This 'winging it' method has not opened the gates of creativity as I hoped.

Lame rating: 10. (Wrote just to fill the page. It was just like being back in school writing whatever the teacher put on the board.)

NaNoWriMo - Day 22

I wonder if banging my head against the keyboard and using what comes out can be counted as writing?

Number 1's made an herculean effort. Her will is strong. Her wrists maybe not so strong.

Number One Competitor: 41,132

Coops: 45,555 (NaNo wants 36,667)

Justification/excuse: Neeaaaarrrlllyy there.

Lame rating: It's so lame a fourth grade teacher would give me an F. Not the good kind of F either.

NaNoWriMo - Day 21

Going solely by gut-feel and using a rule-of-thumb method, I have come up with the following figure. One in every few hundred words is usable. MAYBE. Some idea or a name or maybe a full stop can be salvaged.

As you can see I'm not very excited about the whole idea anymore. The only reason I persevere with this stupid flash-fiction/dialogue thing is for the sake of fair play. If I were to change tack mid-stream, as it were, I think it would be unfair. To someone. Somewhere.

Number One Competitor: 35,511

Coops: 42,982 (NaNo wants: 35,000)

Justification/excuse: 7,000 words feels very far away even with such a lead. I don't know what No. 1 is up to. Not typing I suspect.

Lame rating: 6 and my fingertips hurt.