So another thing I did yesterday was contact a number of people to see if they would be interested in doing a bit of novel writing.
You may or may not have heard of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), but in essence it's an event held each November where people commit to writing a 50,000 word novel in the space of one month. It was started by a writer in San Francisco who wanted to stop procrastinating and get something done. The idea was that by applying a strict deadline to a large project, he would be forced to write with an intensity that precluded the kind of counter-productive thumb-twiddling and self-censorship he usually engaged in. He enlisted a group of friends to help drive him on, made a big deal out of it so that he would feel extra pressure to get it done and cleared the decks for a month to make the time for it. From there it's gone on to become quite a big deal, with groups around the world taking part each November.
This whole thing only came to my attention early last month. I'm at a bit of a funny point with my writing. I'm writing regularly again, which is a good thing, but I feel like I need to take some kind of creative leap. I'm terrified, though, as it has been years since I actually completed anything. My command of language and my ability to tell a story both feel clumsy and amateurish. Which doesn't bode well, given that I want to make a leap to some kind of writing based career once we leave the UK in 3-4 years time. So, despite certain cynical reservations, this NaNoWriMo thing leaped out at me. It sounded like exactly the kind of literary cliff-jumping I needed. A fixed deadline at the end of which, regardless of quality and free from judgement, I will have finished something again.
Yes I was cynical. The whole exercise smacked of the American self-help industry. As a basic concept I approached it sniffily, feeling it was trying to offer me easy answers to something I knew to be difficult. It felt like the writer's equivalent to some kind of ab-tensing fat-buster and the title of the founder's book on the subject - “No Plot? No Problem! A Guide To Writing A Novel In 30 Days” - didn't help matters. But beneath that, as with many self-help guides, lay some good ideas: the importance of deadline-setting in creative work; the need to set aside ego in the creation of a first draft; the joy of completion. These were all things I needed to embrace, but even so I went into the book expecting to last about 50 pages.
I was pleasantly surprised. The tone was conversational and down to earth, and most importantly there was no sense that the author was waving a magic wand to tell you how to write. The fact that writing is hard work was not tiptoed around. Nor was it implied that you would necessarily write anything of worth. The idea was that this was an exercise that could well be useful for you. Even if you progressed nowhere as a writer, the undertaking itself was a worthwhile mental and emotional exertion. The book was quite candid about your chances too: I can't remember exactly off the top of my head, but I think the successful completion rate each NaNoWriMo is (I think) about 17%. Best of all, there was no sense of on-selling. Nothing to suggest that you needed to invest any further money into the venture (in fact, the organisation actually runs as a non-profit venture). It was just a book of tips and encouragement for people who wanted to participate. So that sold it: I was going to do this thing.
November had gone, of course, so I had to either wait a year or just do it myself. Wanting to capitalise on my enthusiasm, I decided that I would do it early next year. January seemed like the logical choice: lousy weather (in this hemisphere, anyway), 31 days in the month (mua ha ha), everyone is broke and there's not a lot going on.
So that's where I am! Andrew's Novel Writing Month (AnNoWriMo) will be happening January 2009, from the 1st (optimistically) to the 31st. 50,000 words, or about 1,600 words per day.
I've emailed a few people to see if anyone else is keen. I know at least three more people who are going to take part and if you haven't heard from me but think you might be keen then please let me know. What doing it as a group will involve I don't know. Probably somewhere online to post our word counts and maybe, for those who are local, a few writing sessions in a pub or cafe. This last thing sounds weird, but the idea is that by meeting up you get a better sense of not being alone in this thing and encourage each other to make the time.
So, will I manage it? I'm not sure to be honest. I have no real idea of what I'm going to do. The freedom of the exercise, the ability to write in any genre I choose while know that no-one else will ever need to read it (read: I may write a trashy fantasy novel), makes me quite indecisive. The rules, such as they are, are quite open too. For example, you are allowed to plot and plan as much as you like in advance. You can do your research, sketch out your characters and plaster your walls with notecards, just so long as you don't write any prose until that first day. On the other hand, it's recommended you don't overdo it, or indeed use ideas you've been developing for some time, simply because the greater your attachment to the idea, the more difficult it will be for you to compromise quality in the short term for the sake of a word count. So I'm not sure whether I should start kicking ideas around now or just start on the first day and see where things take me. And those considerations don't even begin to address how I'm going to manage my time or meet daily word quotas. Well, we'll see.
Anyway, that's what's going on for me. Any thoughts are welcome!
By the way, official NaNoWriMo site here and Wiki here.
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Tuesday, December 02, 2008
AnNoWriMo!
Things I Did Yesterday 02/12/08
Criminey! How did such a nice clear day turn so foul? Anyway, yesterday I:
- Worked. Got closer to finalising the Christmas roster, got the holidays up to date and worked on library orders for Islington, Southwark and Hounslow. Tried to get away early (I'm owed a couple of hours) but it just wasn't happening.
- Sat on the internet during Alex's soap night, just catching up. I think I need to clean out my feeds a little, just to make them a little quicker. Do I really need the BBC entertainment news feed?
- Watched this weeks TV Burp, which had me laughing my ass off. Also watched the second episode of the new IT Crowd season, which was a good laugh. Finally, got back into the WWI doco series I've been watching. This covered the war in the Middle East, including Gallipoli. It also had an amazing piece of footage of a young Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who even on a piece of grainy old footage from early this century had an incredibly powerful, magnetic look.
- Actually had a decent night's sleep. Amazing!
Monday, December 01, 2008
Things I Did Yesterday 01/12/08
Hello December! I am Andrew Salmond, and I am here to rock you! But yesterday it was November and I:
- Got up around 8.30 with a cracking headache. Completely self-induced, but boy did I feel sorry for myself. Stil, I was in better shape thanAlex, who wasn't well at all.
- Sat at my desk to catch up on my reading only to have my chair suddenly topple forward, snapped at the base. Bugger.
- Popped out to the shops for juice, rolls and bacon.
- Played a little Xbox then made up some bacon rolls for us.
- Once Alex was up, we went for a walk up Holloway Road to the Waitrose with a roast in mind. I do love shopping at Waitrose. Everything just seems a little bit nicer, not to mention the amazing deli section they have. But we were good and just bought ingredients for the roast.
- Popped up to Argos and got myself a new desk chair. Unlike Waitrose, I take no pleasure whatsoever from shopping there. In fact, there are few things worse on the weekend.
- Came home. I did the washing up then played a little Fallout while Alex dozed on the couch. Broke my combat shotgun. Bugger.
- I headed off to have a bath while Alex started dinner. Then I put my new chair together, which is okay but not as nice as my old one. Life is so hard.
- Roast lamb. Mmmm...
- Having eaten, we decided that around 8pm was certainly late enough to go to bed (is this what getting older means?), where we watched a marathon session of Paul Merton in India. I enjoyed this series, more than the China one I think. You get the sense there was a lot more freedom for him to visit whomever he pleased. I certainly don't think his Chinese governmental escort would have allowed anything like the eunuch beggars/extortionists he went to see in India. Anyway, I hope he does some more. He's no Palin, but he does the Englishman abroad thing very well.
- Thought about reading, but I was too bloody tired.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Things I Did Yesterday 27/11/08
Gotta get Liz's brother Ian back from them Family raiders, if the radscorpions ain't got him already. Oh, yesterday I:
- Got into town and wrote a little bit about my plans for January. More on that soon.
- Worked, dealing with the new delivery. I also double-checked the order for the month, observing the new watchword of "caution".
- Was interviewed by a student at lunchtime about the industry and why shops locate themselves where they do (for the same reasons any business does). He was supposed to shout me a coffee in return for 10 minutes of my time. I wound up buying his coffee and talking my entire lunch. Mind you, the latter probably wasn't his fault.
- Got home and read some comics. Batman continued it's shit-festery with the end of the RIP storyline. Honestly, the whole thing has been pretty dire, mainly let down by Daniel's confused storytelling. As for the ending? Limp. Walking Dead and Night Witches were the best of the week so far. I've yet to read the Brubaker double of Cap and DD, nor the latest instalments of Northlanders, Incredible Hercules and Umbrella Academy.
- Played some Fallout, which so far I've been very good about keeping to small bursts of an hour or so.
- Watched the last episode of Stephen Fry in America, which we've enjoyed. It's not exactly in-depth, but it makes for great pre-bedtime viewing.
- Had a very broken night's sleep. Just what I need!
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Things I Did Yesterday 25/11/08
How do you manage to keep up? Anyway, yesterday I:
- Trekked back from Greenwich, where Alex and I had spent the previous day as a special birthday surprise! It was really nice, actually, and it was only the buses that kept reminding me that we were, in fact, still in London.
- Lugged our new kitchen table back with us, which we picked up from a market for £35. Such a great find as it's perfect for the limited space we have, both as a 4-seater dining table and also as a work surface.
- Tidied and rearranged the lounge in time for Andrea to arrive, bearing the base for a laksa, which she then cooked in typically excellent style. We had a good catch-up and then walked down to Angel, where I bought a copy of Fallout 3 (after much deliberation) to go with my new Xbox 360 (£110 from ASDA).
- Got home, did some stuff, had a bath, read some comics (boy do I love Scalped) and caught up on my web reading.
- Once Alex's soaps had finished (9pm) I moved in on the lounge, popped Fallout in and started playing. That pretty much took me through until 1am, whereupon I died trying to kill a bunch of guys who were guarding the ruin of an old supermarket. I must say, I'm loving it. I was a big fan of the Fallout games way back when, and indeed Wasteland before them. The post-apocalyptic RPG thing always appealed to me and this new one does an excellent job of recapturing the feel of the earlier chapters. Okay, so it also feels a bit like a re-skinned Oblivion, but that's fine by me. I think it has been a bit mis-marketed though - the Gears of War crowd are going to be bleeding out their eyes with the amount of dialogue and reading material - but it's exactly what I hoped it might be. Good news for me, bad news for productivity.
- Though actually, it's not too bad. The fact that I have gone down the console route rather than upgrading my PC has a number of benefits. Firstly, it means I can play all the new games for far less than it would have cost me to do an upgrade. I'm at the point where a games-ready conversion is essentially going to be a rebuild, but really my PC is fine for 90% of what I need to do. Aside from the odd fan that needs replacing, it's still rock-solid. Secondly, to play a game I need access to the television, which means it can't monopolize my time every night. At least, these are the justifications I tell myself.
- Stumbled to bed, intending to get up early to make the most of this, my last day off of a 5 day stretch.
Sunday, November 09, 2008
Things I Did Yesterday 09/11/08
Hot damn! Two days in a row! Time to reward myself with a day off. Anyway, yesterday I:
- Got up early intending to capitalise on the fact that Alex had got to bed late. What a world of early morning possibility!
- Sat on the internet. Like a gigantic sea-sponge immersed in a sewer. Suddenly it wasn't early morning any more.
- Had poached eggs and bacon for breakfast and then we planned out the mammoth task that was Rearranging Our Lounge.
- Rearranged our lounge. Phew!
- Nipped out to Leyland to pick up some tester pots of paint. We're gonna give the lounge a fresh lick. Of paint. Came back via a diversion to the Scolt's Head for a cheeky pint.
- Tested a couple of paints, one of which was unsuitable, but the other of which seemed quite good. Pretty much what we have now, really: a kind of off-white. What do you call that? Eggshell? Beetle Breath? What am I, a decorator?
- Saw the start of the NZ/Scotland game and then walked down to the Orwell to have a quick drink with Alex before she went off to a house-warming (which - as was sort of expected - she is yet to return from around 24 hours later).
- Settled in front of the telly and watched the extras on the [REC] DVD, then the latest Futurama DVD, which was a little underwhelming, to be honest. Meant to watch Swedish vampire flick Let the Right One In, but wound up watching a show about recently deceased comedy producer Geoffrey Perkins.
- Watched a World at War episode which covered Germany to the end of the war. There's a particular relish in Olivier's voice while narrating the destruction of Germany's cities as revenge for the destruction the Germans had wrought. Thankfully, however, the last few episodes' frequent footage of bulldozed piles of bodies has not inured me to the sight.
- Slept, and dreamt of bunnies.
