NaNoWriMo hangs over my head like the sleep demon who invades my dreams. By now, half of writers’ Twitter is nattering away about their plans for the month, finding time to churn out those coveted 50,000 words.

Me, on the other hand… well, I wiped two people’s bums this morning. Then I needed to buy some lunch and put petrol in my car. I have a pretty long meeting after work tonight. And I still need to catch up on Rings of Power.

I’ve meant to commit to 50k words in November for the last three years. Three! It still hasn’t happened, and by now, I’m starting to think it never will. As a secondary school teacher with a toddler, novel writing is something I have to scrape together in a six minute episode of Hey Duggee, or two. It blows my mind how I could ‘never find the time’ a few years ago, and now, I know for a fact that I have no time.

While some of you fantastic authors manage to write a novel from scratch this month, I’ll still be checking in on my piecemeal text, when I get the chance, of course. I’ll try to contain the jealousy.