Novelist by 50

That's great! I'm sure you can do it. :) Don't worry about the spelling (that's what spellcheckers and editing are for), and if you can't type well, you can always write it all out longhand. And even if you don't consider yourself a writer of stories, the fact that you have over 3k words means you can write SOMETHING. Just make sure to get that "something" out on paper or the computer each day, and I'm sure you'll get the result you want. Good luck with your noveling. :)

Spelling isn't necessary. You can type faster if you use more than one finger per hand, though. And by age 49, you surely have some stories to tell.

Good luck!

That's a very worthwhile goal, seanbhean! And very doable. Keep us posted on your progress.

Good luck and best wishes!
Now, get back to writing! :)

Ladypamela

I was never a writer of stories before I did my first NaNo, either. Now I've done it (and won it!) 4 years in a row. You can, too! Just keep going along and don't worry about how weird it all gets.

Thanks for the encouraging comments, I am up to 8,000 words. I am trying something new today: instead of cleaning house (usual weekend chore) I'm going on a word orgy. I sitting down at the computer to see what happens when you write till your wrists fall off. Should be interesting.

Spelling is my curse. My spelling problem is two-fold. For one thing I never learned how to spell properly in the first place, which results in me spelling phonetically the words I can't memorize from reading them in books.

Secondly, I have dyslexia, (the reason I was never able to learn to spell properly) and tend to spell about half the words I write in complete reverse, example, if I want to say cat, usually I write tac.

In my case even the best spell checker is unable to correct my spelling, because of the front to back spelling reversal. Spell checkers look at the first 2 letters and than guess at what you should have spelt. But when what should be the first 2 letters are now the last 2 letters, the spell checker totally has no idea what word you were saying.

It took me nearly three years to self program my MSWorks spell checker, but eventually I did get it programed to catch my odd misspellings and set them right, so today, most folks see what I type on my lenses and forum posts and they just assume I'm a pretty good speller, when in fact, all of my posts are first typed using FireFox (the browser auto spell checks) and than run through my customized MSWorks. A process that takes a bit of time, and results in me not answering as quickly as I might had I typed the forum post right into the reply box.

Even doing all this, a lot of misspelling still slip by, but at least you can actually read what I wrote. If my words had not been spell checked, you would be hard pressed to make heads or tails of them at all.

There was a time when I was constantly fretting over my spelling, and I tied like hell to learn to spell properly, but after years of trying every spelling program under the sun, and wasting money and stressing myself out over it, finally, I just said to hell with it, this is just the way my mind is going to spell words wither I like it or not, and I'm going to have to learn to live with it and deal with it. The fact is, I'm an author, and an author who has to constantly rely on an editor to help you with little basics like spelling, really becomes a burden all around. I knew I had to make an effort to change this, and if I couldn't change how I spelt things, than I was just going to have to find a way to correct the miss spellings after I'd written them. Once I had accepted the fact that this was a disability that I could not change, I was able to move past it and find ways to work around it and not let it get in the way of my life anymore. This wasn't something I overcame over night though, it took many many years and a whole lot of patience. Now, there are few people who look at my words who could guess that I had dyslexia, most just assume that the few misspellings they see are minor typos, caused by typing too fast and missing a few keys!

For others with similar spelling difficulties, I suggest you change your browser to FireFox, as that'll catch most all of your mistakes, as you type. And if you have a lot of words that the normal spell checker misses, than use MSWorks and add those custom words into the spell checker, so that it does catch them.

Best advice: write from your heart, just let the story flow. Get it all out on paper, and worry about spelling and grammar later on. You can't edit what you haven't written, so getting it written down is the most important step, everything else comes later. Good luck.

P.S.

I've been writing books, short stories, and how to guides for 30 years now, and have written every one of them out in long hand, cause I never learned to type either.

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Publishing Methods
How to Start a Publishing Company
Creating Character Profiles
Secrets To Writing Success
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Typing well enough to get by is easy enough if you learn where to place your fingers on the keyboard so you aren't exhausting yourself sending one or two fingers all over it. And have you investigated Dvorak? My son swears by it. Remember, the standard keyboard was invented to slow typists down because the original all-metal typewriters would jam when people typed really fast.

I didn't know that Firefox did spellchecking. How do you access that feature?

Hello and thank you for all the comments,
Today is 7/17 and I am up to 28,500 words. I am definately going to have to invest time in a typing program, as this 4 finger typing is killing my hands.

I DID IT, I wrote 50,000 words and completed a mystery by July 29; I proudly wore my "novelist" pin to my birthday dinner. WOOHOO!!!

Congratulations!!!!!!

*throws confetti and candy*

Well done.

Hey, that's a great achievement! Good for you!