Once upon a time I had an idea that wouldn’t go away. It was a story about a boarding school where one teacher murders another and the case is solved by two girls who are best friends. Even though I’d been thinking about this idea for a long time, I’d never actually had the courage to write it down. It was such a strange idea – I couldn’t think of any books that were quite like it – and that made me nervous. I’d also never written a full-length novel before, and the thought was terrifying. Could I actually write all of those words?

It’s funny to remember now, but back then there were a lot of reasons why I shouldn’t write the book, and not many why I should. But I got very, very lucky, because in the autumn of 2010 I heard about something called NaNoWriMo. This is an online programme that pushes people to choose a novel idea and write down 50,000 words of that novel during the month of November. (It’s short for National Novel Writing Month).

I decided to take that challenge, and on the 1st of November I sat down and started to actually write my book. And the first thing I wrote was …

And, after all, it was me who found the body.

It’s funny, because that isn’t how it should have been at all. Daisy is still upset about it, though of course she pretends not to be. You see, it’s always Daisy that the interesting things happen to, not me, and it’s Daisy who is the right sort of person to be a heroine. I am much too short…

After that, I wrote a lot of words, most of which I thought were awful. I got to 50,000 words by the end of November, and I did it by writing anything that came into my head. I was writing too fast to be able to name characters (I’m not kidding – in that first draft everyone but Daisy and Hazel was called ???), and I wrote a lot of weird scenes where Hazel and Daisy just chatted to each other because I didn’t know what would happen next.

I hated what I wrote. It made me angry and embarrassed, because I was used to being given time to polish my work and make it beautiful. I knew this ugly first draft was not good, and that was an unfamiliar and frightening thing to realise.

BUT. At the end of that month I had 50,000 words of a story that I don’t think I ever would have written otherwise. I ignored it until the next spring, when I opened up the file again and finished the book. Then I went back and edited, and edited, and gave everyone names and took out those boring discussion scenes … and suddenly I had a story that really wasn’t that bad. It was a story that was complete enough to send out to agents – and that put me on the (long, stressful but amazing) road to actually getting that story published.

And I honestly don’t think any of that would have happened without the push of NaNoWriMo. At the time it felt awful, but I can’t count the number of lessons I learned that month. I found out that first drafts don’t really matter. I found out how quickly I could write if I stopped worrying about being perfect. I found out that I LOVED telling stories about Daisy and Hazel.

NaNoWriMo is happening again this year, and I’m not (officially) doing it. But I am currently halfway through my ninth (!) book, the seventh in the Murder Most Unladylike series, and I’m writing 2,000 words a day. They’re messy words. A lot of the scenes I’m making up won’t fit into the next draft. Sometimes Daisy and Hazel just stop and chat to each other. BUT I am putting words down on a page, and as soon as the words are there, I can fix them.

So if you’re doing NaNoWriMo at the moment, DON’T GIVE UP! You’re doing amazingly just by turning up and typing. And if you keep at it, you never know where your story may end up …