Category Archives: NaNo

Nano Reflections

06 Thursday Dec 2012

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Last year I posted about NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month for those of you NaNoWirMo2who prefer their English unabbreviated. I talked about why I was not doing it and why that made me a heretic.

This year, in order to stay ahead of the curve and reveal my contrary nature, I opted to go ahead and do it. Because not doing it once and claiming you are doing so because it is cool not to is fine but there is no sense in repeating the pose for a second year. No sense in doing what people expect, always keep the audience guessing. 🙂

Actually, the main reason I opted to do it was to give myself a kick up the backside. Earlier in the year I had promised a publisher a complete anthology of short stories (well, one novella and some shorts) and had promised him delivery by a certain time. In the meantime, the deadline has whooshed past and I was still sat there with barely anything written and all of that painfully extracted over the course of several months. So, when November loomed I looked at my barely begun novella and decided that this would be my Nano project.

Of course, I still had the same problems as last year, which were my main reasons for not doing Nano. Work life balances getting all out of synch and all that. This time I even had a regular job to occupy me. I knew that 50K was unlikely to be a target I could aim for and still stay sane, married, healthy and employed. Instead, I opted for a lesser target. As things stood on my WIP I had just under 10K written already and I had predicted it to be about 30K when complete (various additional stories were planned to take the whole project to more than 50K, some of which had already been written and just needed tweaking). I therefore set myself two targets:

1) Write at least 20K words in order to get the total up to more than 30K

2) Complete the novella

By the end of NaNo I had written 20777 words which definitely achieved the first target and had put the novella to just under 30K words (close enough to be not worthwhile worrying about). However, I had not finished the novella…. the reason being that I realised that it is going to be a much longer story than I originally thought. I am almost at the end but there are at least another few thousand words to go and I am pondering additional scenes which may take it even higher than that.

So, I am counting my first NaNo experience as a win. I acheived one of my goals and only did not achieve the other because of changes in the goalposts. Not only that, but the process has reinvigorated my enthusiasm for the project which had been mired in the doldrums for far too long. In the course of writing I created a new character who I enjoy writing (he was intended to be an incidental local colour character, present for maybe a scene or two, but I ended up taking him further than that) and thought of some new plot ideas which I hope work. Of course, I have also produced something that is grammatically messy, likely filled with examples of bad writing and worse plot cliches but at least I have produced something and there is nothing that cannot be fixed in the edit.

Would I do it again in the future? Maybe. I suppose it would depend on the circumstances – am I working full time? Do I have a project that is languishing? I do think it was a good motivation tool and so worth doing on that basis alone. Not sure I would ever get to the point where I would ‘win’ NaNo but I am confident that it will be useful nontheless.

The traditions of my people

30 Sunday Oct 2011

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I’m all for traditions – customs, rituals, holidays, celebrations, whatever. I love them and like to see them maintained. Events which happens every year and does so because ‘it’s always been that way’ touch me in a special place in my heart. So, I thought I would dedicate this blog post to one of the solemnest and most important traditions of my people.

The coming month will see my people fasting and praying, working hard to appease their gods. They will go without sleep, without food and spend long hours in angst filled contemplation on the human spirit. When this time of trial is over, they will emerge from it as better people – stronger and more capable of dealing with the every day stresses and strains. It is a sacred time, a testing time, a time of enlightenment.

What am I talking about? Why, NaNoWriMo of course… 🙂 Possibly the most important celebration of geekdom and social mediadom ever, eclipsing even ‘International Talk Like a Pirate Day‘ in it’s importance. I may be exaggerating here, of course. As you know, nothing could possibly eclipse Talk like a pirate day… Well, except maybe Talk Like a Dalek day….

National Novel Writing Month has been around for quite a few years. In fact, it was first run in 1999 when it had only 21 participants. This makes it, in internet terms, an ancient tradition which harkens back to the days BF (Before Facebook). It has since grown in size to 200,000 recorded writers taking part in 2010. The goal is simple: write 50,000 words and report them on the NaNoWriMo website between the 1st and the 30th of November. It is possibly the largest (well, certainly the most well known) writer productivity challenge in the world. It is a great way to learn discipline – to try to dedicate yourself to writing every day not just when you feel like it. This is a good thing and should be encouraged, which is why I consider NaNoWriMo to be an important tradition in Geekdom.

However, I have a confession to make. I am a heretic. I do not follow the ancient tradition of NaNoWriMo as a true follower of the Path of Geek should. I spurn my geekish ancestors and bring shame upon those who follow the true path with my progressive and non-orthodox ways. I have never signed up for NaNo nor even made any effort to increase my writing output in November. It is shameful, I know, but I do have a very good reason and it is all to do with timing.

I’m a teacher. As such I tend to get some wonderful summer holidays to luxuriate in and get lots of writing done. Six whole weeks of it, in fact. Sheer bliss. However, once September comes, the school term starts and things get a lot busier. OK, at the moment I am what we call a ‘gentleman of leisure’ (which is another name for scrounging layabout) and so am not expected to be working in a school at the moment. However, past experience has taught me that November (which lands just after the first half term holiday of the school year) is often a busy time for supply jobs to start rolling in and that means I have no guarantee of free time between now and December. So, rather than commit to NaNo and risk failing because a big job comes in that sucks up all my free time, I prefer to keep writing as normal and be there in spirit for those who are suffering the months of privation ahead.

Of course, I am also supporting in other ways – including doing at least one guest post in the coming month so that someone doing NaNo can free up more time for writing…

So, to those who are about to write, I salute you. I’ll be here on the touchline with the half time oranges and the mixed metaphors…