NaNoWriMo Progress - Day 2

Day 2 of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) started off early for me, as I was woken by my dog at 5 am wanting to go out for a pee. It seemed a bit pointless trying to go back to sleep when my alarm was set for 6am, so I instead used the time to catch up on some social media, to pin some new cozy mystery books on boards on Pinterest, to finish a few little jobs for publishing clients, and to get in a few minutes on Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT).

It turned out to be a gorgeous day, and the walk to the local Starbucks certainly got me in the mood for work. Plenty of sunshine and the first signs of frost on the ground. Unfortunately for my dog, I hadn't quite realised the outside temperature so didn't put her jacket on her, but she didn't seem too bothered by the chill in the air.

I was hoping to get a chai latte with my AMT points today, but the app/gift card reader was out of service and I didn't have cash on me, so came back drink-less. I did notice the red cups and the new Christmas drinks menu up, giving me plenty of opportunities to try out new drinks each morning as a nice incentive for getting up early to write. I'm expecting the machine to be out of action for a while, but we'll see what happens tomorrow. It's the easiest way for me to get up and about in the morning and to get into a writing habit.  

Back at the guesthouse, I managed to get my room cleaned, pets sorted, had breakfast and a shower, meaning that I was all set to sit down and work by 7am. I had originally planned to do my Pomodoro method timed writing sprints first, but instead ended up doing a bit of client work, answering emails, sorting my accounts, and finalising things with my new narrator who will begin work on my audiobooks on a 50:50 royalty split on ACX mid December. So I'm super excited about that.

Yesterday I found some music on YouTube that tickled my fancy, with a bit of a Halloween theme and I ended up listening to that as I worked, which kept up my motivation. See what you think. Not quite sure how I ended up with it in my feed, but it was perfect for my mood, and for Historical cozy mystery month!!!

1960s playlist
1920s playlist

By lunchtime, I was feeling a bit sleepy and was struggling to keep my eyes open, so I grabbed a power nap for 20 minutes and woke up feeling ready for work again. Something I've really noticed is that when I eat frozen fruit before bed, I don't feel sleepy and my mood is much better the following day, but when I don't eat my frozen fruit (especially blueberries) I always end up sleepy and a bit deflated the following day. This has happened a few times now, so I think it's definitely something I need to incorporate into my daily routine if I'm going to be a better and more productive writer. This is especially important since I'm living at the guesthouse and not in my own place as I'm eating very differently to how I normally would, and my daily routine is all over the place. NaNoWriMo is really going to help me to develop some better writing habits. 

I wasn't too worried about flipping my day around today as I just did my writing sprints after lunch instead of in the morning, and since I was just going through an already written book, to get it ready to send to Kit my new editor, I didn't need to be in my writing zone so much. But I will need to get back into this tomorrow when I begin writing proper again and start on a new cozy mystery book. I found two cozy mystery book covers that I love, so I'm using these as inspiration now I'm getting ready to get mine done professionally. They both appealed to me on for different reasons.  

The evening was equally busy, I worked on some things for clients, and putting today's blog posts together now, and I like to get my Free Book Friday newsletter out by 11pm my time (4pm in the US). I'm feeling very happy with progress so far, and definitely starting to see some rewards - new followers on Pinterest, new members of the Facebook group, and an average of 100 or more new mailing list subscribers each day off the back of the Prolifick Works historical cozy mystery free book promotion. I hope that this will lead up to a very successful relaunch of my books come December. I'm putting aside £1 a day towards the purchase of the ISBNS in December, and I need to set up my publishing website, and revamp my charity's website (I had the Charity Commission annual report deadline to meet too, but that's all done now, which is a relief until this time next year again).  

That's pretty much it from me for today as a new cozy mystery author and NaNoWriMo participant. Feel free to add me as a writing buddy if you want some moral support, and if you have any questions at all about my writing or routine or publishing things, feel free to ask in the comments section below. I'm new to this myself but I'm learning something every day, and I'm more than happy to pass on these things to others. 

I've got three main goals for NaNoWriMo Day 3 and these are:

• to complete 6 writing sprints of 25 minutes each for my next book
• to take Saturday evening off with a pizza, salad, and garlic bread as a treat (I'm awful at taking time off, but I find it does improve my productivity).
• to listen to a cozy mystery audiobook on my phone by Adele Abbott that I downloaded for free from Audible as part of a free trial. One of the best ways for me to improve my own writing, is to read as many books by other cozy mystery authors as I can, and to see what works and what doesn't work for me as a reader. I decided to go with the audiobook because I can listen to this in bed at night, since I spend so many hours a day in front of a screen and don't yet have a lightweight Kindle device to read on.