Nanowrimo Round-up Week Three

Yesterday I spent the day with Laurel from Ooh La La Vintage - it started with brunch at the Honeypot Cafe, continued with a Magical Mystery Tour of all the best vintage shops and thrift stores of central Christchurch, and ended with a glass of wine in a pavement cafe by the river! So much fun. These pictures were taken in the 'retro room' of one of the thrift stores - a cupboard-sized space stuffed with 'retro' clothing of dubious origin. I've never had much luck in there, but it's so much fun to crawl right in and rummage.

I'm still mooching along with my Nanowrimo novel, but an influx of client work and the revisions on Actual Book that Needs to Go to Agent in December (working title) have been eating up most of my time. Excuses, excuses! In reality, I could make time to catch up on my word count, but at the moment it is more important to me to make steady progress and not become too stressed. Particularly since a cold is hovering at my writing desk, threatening to descend and fill my head with glutinous goo.

Here's this week's A Cat of Impossible Colour Nanowrimo Round-up! As always, please don't be offended if you are not featured - I choose posts that I think will appeal to the largest number of people, and I read all your Nano reports with pleasure. Go here for the full list of participants.

• Sara shares one of her Polyvore sets and explains the inspiration behind it. She has made some gorgeous ones for the different characters in her novel - check out the Polyvore group to see them!
• Kate discusses the importance of the reader when writing memoir.
• Andrea is debating whether to take a different direction with her novel.
• Lola talks about plot snags and procrastination.
• This isn't exactly Nano-related, but huge congratulations to Teresa, whose short story In a Seaside Cafe was one of the thirteen winners of the Bridport Prize. This is a really big deal, a prestigious award, and a huge achievement. Well done!
• Valerie has posted yet another great list of writing prompts to take your story in crazy directions and save your sanity. If you feel like you're stuck in a rut, check them out! (And if you're really, really stuck, start a chapter with 'And then the aliens arrived,' and see what happens).
• Susie is looking for a name for her female main character - see if you can help her out.
• Priscilla shares her Nanowrimo playlist.

And today's Nanowrimo challenge: list three to five things that you LOVE about your book. The things that make you want to keep going. Go!

(And here are mine:

Living graffiti
Creepy moments with dead animals left on doorsteps (I'm not as evil as I sound, I promise)
Reverse empaths
A really bizarre love story
The setting, which I'm too superstitious to describe).