Nanowrimo

Well that’s what it says I did. This is the third consecutive year I’ve taken part in NaNoWriMo and it was so much harder this time but the writing experience was much better.

I’d already decided (my only plan) that I wasn’t going to attempt a novel-length thing and had intended to write 30 short fiction drafts, but it didn’t turn out like that. I glided in and out of a novel-like thing with ‘interludes’ and a few short fiction drafts in between. Until I re-read it I won’t really know what I’m dealing with but I have lots of words to play with and … may even write some more before the end of the month.

How did I cope with it? Mind over matter, chocolate and fresh coffee mostly. Was it worth it? Oh yes. Will I do it again? Very likely.

Grinderman: Heathen Child

Well. This AMAZING video took my mind off the remaining 28,000 words I plan to write for National Novel Writing Month. Enjoy.

Interludes (and a little insomnia) …

Well that’s where I was. In bed looking at the cat who was watching me read Lydia Davis. The fireworks have stopped (for now) but my mind starts wandering (never a good thing late at night) so I think I might as well get up and write. Then I’m downstairs in the kitchen and the stove’s still warm and I make some coffee … I won’t ramble on, you (probably) know how it is.

It’s also day 6 / 7 of NaNo (looks at watch). No it’s definitely day 7 and I’ve written around 9,000 words so far. I was quite impressed with the first 6,000 and then got even more excited when I realised how themes and characters overlapped with what I wrote (and did nothing with) last year. So that’ll be something to think about in the edit. But today I stalled, so I gave myself what I call an *interlude* day when I let myself write about anything. I’m not a plot driven writer, ergo I don’t plan either.

However, these *interludes* often get me going again. Letting go of what I’m *supposed* to be writing about frees me up to produce (what I describe as) creative soup; a mix of found things and stuff I see or things that have happened during the day – or sometimes – a pure stream of consciousness response to just being. So that’s where I am today, having an interlude, a break from the story to bring something creative back into it all – and (literally) getting very cold feet in the kitchen at two o’clock in the morning.

Even more stuff and things

Thought I ought to have a title for my NaNo *project* (not even going to call it a novel), so decided to revive an idea I had earlier this year and use *it* both as the title of my project and a blog which I set up, then neglected to pursue – and have now re-set-up here.

We Shall Have Rain was (and if you scroll down to the bottom of the blog you can see a photo of it) the name of a shop in Preston that sold umbrellas. It’s not there any more, but I always loved its name. Says so much about the place and the weather – and I like writing about weather and I’ve come to terms with it – if I want to write about it (can you tell I’m in feisty mode), then I will!

Original post (March 2010) re: We Shall Have Rain here.

NaNoWriMo 2010: Countdown

Two days to go. Already lots of discussion about NaNo on Twitter (#nanowrimo hashtag if you’re interested); to plan or not to plan; are nails the optimum length for typing; are friends/family geared up for the degree of separation that will prevent us from being sociable/putting food on the table.

I’ve only a couple of thoughts to contribute to NaNo prep. One, don’t over-think it in advance. Second, once it starts, type like fuck.

Enjoying the ride: NaNoWrimo 2010

(Oops) I did it again.

Signed up for NaNoWriMo 2010. I hadn’t intended to, but my inner editor has been such a bitch this year (at one point, deleting 75% of my 2010 writing output before it got anywhere near a final draft), that I’m kicking her out for the whole of November.

Next question. Am I writing a novel? Tricky one. The whole point of NaNoWriMo is that you dedicate 30 days of your life to producing (at least) 50,000 words (the equivalent of a first draft/short novel) which you can later edit, re-write and hone into something magical and worthwhile. My problem is I’m not a novelist.

It’s taken me two years of NaNo’ing to discover this. I’m good at condensing concepts / ideas into a single, or series of, images – what I’m not designed to do is expand an idea to fill a 500, 600, or 700 page novel. It is just not me. I’m a macro>micro kind of writer. Short fiction (or other forms with small word counts ) is my thing.

So (a further question), why do NaNo? In 2008 (the first year I did it) – I wrote 65k words of freewrite over three weeks – pure stream-of-consciousness stuff that Kerouac would have been proud of (if he’d been stuck in my kitchen instead of On the Road). It was never going to be a novel, but I realised that I’d got a stock pot of ideas that I still occasionally dip in and out of it to see if there are any tasty bits left). It was worth the ride.

Last year (NaNo 2009), I aimed to write the first draft of a novel and though I got to 50k+ words, I knew I’d failed. Much of my ‘novel’ was composed of what I decided to call ‘interludes’ – stuff I wrote just to keep writing (for this is what you have to do, no time to stop and rework; going back and giving up is not something I like to do!). Again I’ve used these ‘interludes’ (far more creative than anything I’d written in the ‘novel’ sections) as a wordy stock pot, and I’m still working some of these sections up into short short stories and poems.

This year, I’ve decided in advance that I’m going to do 30 freewrites, to a 2000 maximum word limit every day in an attempt to generate enough first drafts to nourish me through (at least) the first half of 2011. It’s probably not what the Office of Letters & Light intended when they started NaNoWrimo, but three years in, I know that this is how it works for me.

Finally, I read a great post this morning on how to silence your inner critic (thanks to Andy Shack). Excellent advice for anyone doing NaNo: (hint) I shall be using a lot of #‘s and #note in my NaNo text.

If anyone else out there is doing NaNoWrimo this year, leave your (NaNo) name in the comments below. Mine’s dotseven. Good luck, see you there on 1 November.