Already posted this on WiD, but it seems a shame to deprive the main page of a big long post.

A day in the life of NaNoWriMo:

• Up at seven, seven thirty. Check mail, poke around a few websites, especially checking to see if anyone’s posted on WiD or commented anywhere.
• Get to work around eight-ten. Check mail again.
• Contend with work-related things as long as you can before ever looking at the clock (checking email frequently). If you’re lucky, you look up and it’s eleven-thirty. If you’re not, it’s nine-thirty.
• Depending on how much time there is until noon (an hour will suffice), take out the palm and keyboard and try to get some words down on the story. It might only be two or three hundred, but it’s something.
• Lunch: browse ‘Obsessive’ websites. Try to post something on the blog. Check mail, play with dogs, take a nap. Back to work a little after one.
• Same trick as in the morning, focusing on work as long as you can before looking at the clock, although it’s a brilliant bit of work if you make it past three.
• If you didn’t get any words in in the morning, get some in now. If you’re very lucky, you might have six hundred to show for your time at work. (Yeah, shameful, I know — it would be nice to be busier, but I’m not, so there you go.)
• Five: go home. Play with dogs. Read. Fax off another bit of inane, useless paperwork for the house refinance (which has been going on for about two months now), find something to eat, since you haven’t really all day.
• Six, Seven: do something with Justin if he’s got his homework done, watch a show if there’s something on you watch. If not, do something else with Jackie and Justin til around nine.
• Nine: Jackie goes to bed to read for a bit, start making motions to your computer. Check your mail for perhaps the hundredth time that day.
• Nine-fifty: Tuck Jackie in, check mail one last time. Post something to WiD and then shut off the browser and email. Sync your palm to the desktop so you get the stuff you wrote today into the main document.
• Open up Roughdraft and do a quick spell check and wordcount on what you already got in that day.
• Open up Excel and, on the entry row for today, put in what you have right now. A few columns over, the system shows you a shockingly high number. That is is the number of words you still need to get — that is your motivator. Save the file and close excel because leaving it open is just a distraction.
• Ten: Open winamp, put on your headphones, turn them up really loud, write.
• Ten-forty-five: take off the headphones without noticing and keep writing.
• Eleven-thirty: look up and realize the time. Post what you have to the super secret location for the people reading it. Word count it. Spell check it. Realize you just did it all in the wrong order again and repost the spell-checked version. Word count again because you’ve forgotten the number. Open Excel, put in your new total. Realize you’re still one hundred forty-eight words short on the day.
• Eleven-forty-five: write another two hundred ten words into the next chapter just to get the word count. Save. Spell check. Word count again. Post the last little bit. Update Excel.
• Close everything.
• Twelve-ten: check email and websites again. Crash.

[repeat x30]