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Notes from Nanoland
November has been a strange month for the serpent. It is the time of the annual National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo) ritual and also when the weather warms up and more time needs to be spent watering the weeds just to keep them alive over the summer.
Started with the best of intentions. While the official goal post for the win is 50,000 words, I would be going for 60,000 instead. Meaning of course an average of 2,000 words per day. Following the usual rules of engagement, that means no online lurking or slinking in Cyberia until the daily quota gets met
Of course I had this all organized. The new rules aside from writing those 2,000 words per day would be to go to bed by 11pm (midnight at the latest) and be up at 6am every morning (7am the latest) including days off.
Having found out from previous years that a 20 minute sprint of squiggling at 6am produces a fatter juicier word count than one at 6 or 7pm, a few of those per day would easily reach the daily quota
Well. I did stick to the 2,000 words but the rest of the good intentions fell apart pretty quickly. Maybe it was 2 nights at the most of hitting the serpent sack before midnight.
The quota rule along with keeping up the 160 day Duolingo streak meant that online lurking time was often after 11pm and much of the time the Big Mac computer was playing nasty and typing while connected to the internet or going from one tab to another was like wading through treacle
In the old days I used to be squiggling while out and about either writing by hand and then typing up later in the evening or using a blue tooth keyboard. But it became apparent on the very first day that the keyboard had given up the ghost. It simply would not connect and changing the batteries was no help either.
So gone was the adventure of going to strange and way out cafes, parks, beaches or other inspiring locations specially saved for November. Now all the words would have to be written upstairs at the Lair.
Did manage to get a visit from the muses on the odd day now and again but they were conspicuous by their absence. Like last year and the year before that. Either the magic is gone or a change in the way of doing things has been the reason for the general lack of inspiration. Or too much lurking and stalking on Twitter has scrambled the grey cells beyond recognition.
Before 2015 I had always drawn up batches of tarot cards for inspiration. A quick shuffle of the chosen deck and a string of 3 to 9 cards would then form sections of the story line. Of course if I could come up with something without this safety net all well and good, but often the simple act of working within this apparent restraint of needing to link each random card to the next would spawn an assortment of story ideas.
Towards the end of the month it would become apparent that some strands and threads would be better moved to other locations or simply spliced and diced or dumped but the act of using this story safety net meant that there was always something to be getting on with.
But then I got lazy and figured I did not need the squiggle shuffle anymore. And that is when the story engine started to splutter and die and everything just became an assortment of jigsaw pieces in a box with the cover picture missing and the vague intention that there will be plenty of time in December to lay them all out on the table and put them together in some semblance of story.
Even at the eleventh hour, it is still not too late to make a last ditch attempt at finding a golden thread to link all the pieces together.
And of course, there is always December.
Started with the best of intentions. While the official goal post for the win is 50,000 words, I would be going for 60,000 instead. Meaning of course an average of 2,000 words per day. Following the usual rules of engagement, that means no online lurking or slinking in Cyberia until the daily quota gets met
Of course I had this all organized. The new rules aside from writing those 2,000 words per day would be to go to bed by 11pm (midnight at the latest) and be up at 6am every morning (7am the latest) including days off.
Having found out from previous years that a 20 minute sprint of squiggling at 6am produces a fatter juicier word count than one at 6 or 7pm, a few of those per day would easily reach the daily quota
Well. I did stick to the 2,000 words but the rest of the good intentions fell apart pretty quickly. Maybe it was 2 nights at the most of hitting the serpent sack before midnight.
The quota rule along with keeping up the 160 day Duolingo streak meant that online lurking time was often after 11pm and much of the time the Big Mac computer was playing nasty and typing while connected to the internet or going from one tab to another was like wading through treacle
In the old days I used to be squiggling while out and about either writing by hand and then typing up later in the evening or using a blue tooth keyboard. But it became apparent on the very first day that the keyboard had given up the ghost. It simply would not connect and changing the batteries was no help either.
So gone was the adventure of going to strange and way out cafes, parks, beaches or other inspiring locations specially saved for November. Now all the words would have to be written upstairs at the Lair.
Did manage to get a visit from the muses on the odd day now and again but they were conspicuous by their absence. Like last year and the year before that. Either the magic is gone or a change in the way of doing things has been the reason for the general lack of inspiration. Or too much lurking and stalking on Twitter has scrambled the grey cells beyond recognition.
Before 2015 I had always drawn up batches of tarot cards for inspiration. A quick shuffle of the chosen deck and a string of 3 to 9 cards would then form sections of the story line. Of course if I could come up with something without this safety net all well and good, but often the simple act of working within this apparent restraint of needing to link each random card to the next would spawn an assortment of story ideas.
Towards the end of the month it would become apparent that some strands and threads would be better moved to other locations or simply spliced and diced or dumped but the act of using this story safety net meant that there was always something to be getting on with.
But then I got lazy and figured I did not need the squiggle shuffle anymore. And that is when the story engine started to splutter and die and everything just became an assortment of jigsaw pieces in a box with the cover picture missing and the vague intention that there will be plenty of time in December to lay them all out on the table and put them together in some semblance of story.
Even at the eleventh hour, it is still not too late to make a last ditch attempt at finding a golden thread to link all the pieces together.
And of course, there is always December.