Relax – I won’t post every day as I battle through JulNoWriMo. But, as my first official post on my new blog site all dedicated to things to do with writing and it is the first of July, I thought I would begin here.

Besides, it’s thanks to JulNoWriMo that this blog has come to be at all. After all, it was during last year’s event that I wrote my first novel – The Pukur – which has recently been accepted for publication and, all being well, will be in print during October. This has inspired me to get on with a lot of other writing projects and, after several years of publishing success in a number of magazines, newspapers and blogs, to finally go full-time as a freelance writer.

So here’s to JulNoWriMo and to successful completion of 50,000 words for all of you who are taking part this year!

Just in case you’ve been living under a stone or something and have no idea what JulNoWriMo actually is, I’ll briefly fill you in. The event is the baby sister of NatNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month, traditionally held in November. Up until last month, this was rubbish for me as I was a teacher and November is just when exams and reports are being written – not a good time to trying epic novel-writing! Maybe this November I’ll give it a go – we’ll see. The aim for both is to write every day for just one month and complete 50,000 words to that novel you always wanted to write. You get no prize for it and you could lie about your word count if you were foolish enough to be so vain and no one would be any the wiser. Few lie though and each year more people honestly admit to failing than the full 50,000 than achieve it. A lot get pretty close though and even a few thousand words written is better than nothing at all. There’s always next year to continue your work, isn’t there?

Like last year, my twelve-year-old daughter is writing again (she managed a complete novel last year just as I did. We wrote alongside each other every morning and spurred each other on). But this year, on top of our own novels, we’re also writing one together. That means we have to come up with 75,000 words each – not easy.

My son (aged ten) has also decided to give it a go. He has a complete plot written out and his chapters summarised. I’ve given him a more manageable task of 10,000 words, however. Like me, he struggles to concentrate for long periods of time.

That said, on this – Day One – both of my two children are ahead of me with the word count. It won’t last long though. Probably.

It better not last long.