The first day of NaNoWriMo is finally here. I started writing after midnight, before I went to bed last night, and I’m just sitting down to continue now. I’m a little late getting home, as I went to the climbing gym tonight.

I’m using the free Q10 as my word processor for this month. It was recommended to me by Amanda (her fiance, actually), and it’s really working for me. It’s a very simplistic text editor that has a few handy features:

• No installation required. It’s run from a self-contained executable, so you can toss it on a memory stick with your novel and take it anywhere.
• Run at full screen, allowing you to focus on your writing free of distractions.
• Set a word count target. You can set it for your month or your day goal, and it will display the percentage completed at the bottom of the screen.
• Set a timer. This is one of my favourite features. Once the time is up, it will display how many words you wrote during that period. I plan to set it for 30 minute intervals, to remind myself to stop and stretch every now and then. Having a timer while you write tends to keep you moving at a fast pace.
• Auto-save the document at a customizable interval.
• No distracting red and blue lines under your mistakes that will awaken your inner editor.
• Display multiple word counts. I use one for overall word count and one for daily word count.
• Insert notes into the document. By started a line with “..”, it sets that line as a note. You can bring up the list of existing notes whenever you like. This will be really useful when you go back to edit next month. The notes do not count towards your word count.

Just thought I’d share this with you. I’m off to write now!