Three years ago, I completed the National Novel Writing Month challenge which involves writing 1,667 words a day for thirty days. It was unforgiving, creatively taxing, time consuming exercise. For a month, I actually embodied that life of a writer as I sat drinking and writing my way into the night. I lost nine pounds because although Baileys and milk is delicious, and prevents you from reflecting too hard on your two thousand word defecit from yesterday and the day before, it isn’t dinner. Especially not for a week straight.

I’m not going to do that again because I have a child, so in addition to mixing booze and breastfeeding not being a good idea, I feel like child services might intervene if I threw handfuls of crackers at my son in lieu of all meals for thirty days straight. However, I can commit to 334 words a day. It’s one fifth of the NaNoWriMo goal but given that I have a small person who depends on me, it’s both a challenging and acheivable goal. Because I’ve been known to sneeze out four hundred words on occasion. Those of course would be the kind of sneezes where you cover your whole face and glance in a panicked manner around the room because your arm, face, sweater and the two people standing next to you are coated in snot. An epic sneeze in short, but a sneeze or almost a post no less.

Also, I’m changing the rules which states that the challenge begins at midnight on November 1st and ends at 11:59 November 30th. In case anyone was wondering, I finished at 11:58 November 30th in 2013 and I’m starting my challenge now on the 29th of October, it will come out November first so it totally counts.

I should add that I will be WRITING 334 words a day, not posting them, which takes longer and involves that dastardly and time consuming process known as editing. Instead I shall bank them so I can sit on my laurels a while.

Boom, That’s 335 words. Watch out world, Unwashed is coming.