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Notes from Nanoland
This is now my 12th time doing Nanowrimo in November
The first time was in 2009 and by coincidence, this year’s days and dates coincide - i.e. In 2009 (and also 2015) the first day of November was a Sunday, which also meant that it is a Black Friday month
The last Black Friday in November was in 2015 and I remember it as if only yesterday because it was the day that a bunch of terrorists attempted to attack a football game in France and managed to kill more than a hundred people in the Bataclan theatre
So aside from those awful anniversaries, what I have noticed over the whole time is that I usually spend the first week in a sluggish snailish state unlike most Nanowrimo squigglers who are full of enthusiasm and bright ideas. They start all bright eyed and bushy tailed and chalk up YUUUGE word counts while I just plod along just managing to reach the daily word count quota of 1,666 words
But then things begin to change. In the second week when they run out of juice and enthusiasm, that is when I usually come into my own
It is almost as if the muse - also known as the Inner Serpent just snoozes all week and snickers. Are you serious about this squiggling stuff? Then PROVE it?
So after 8 or 9 days of turning up and making the daily quota even if it is just constipated crap or incoherent stream of consciousness musings and meanderings, that seems to be enough to satisfy the inner critter so that is when the magic begins
I have noticed that since Petunia died, I am no longer capable of producing any semblance of a proper story but I still do Nanowrimo every November more out of habit than anything else.
So it is no longer about the story itself but simply the ritual and the discipline of churning out those words even if most of them turn out to be dreary dross not worthy of taking up space on a hard drive
The last few years for the first week of November, Vernon Dursley has managed to throw a spanner into the works. If it was not his unexpected announcement on Friday 2nd November 2018 that he had just put Number 4 Privet Drive on the market with the auction in 3 weeks time and insisting that I keep it a secret from Daisy and Dudley Dursley then it was last year’s drama where he turned up unexpectedly at the Lair on the first Monday of the month banging on the door demanding to be let in and telling me that he had gone to the cops to report me as a missing person (because of course if HE did not know where I was then obviously no one else did either)
After several failed attempts to write about Cassandra Quinn with her boring day job of being an auditor at the tax office while dreaming of having her own private detective agency, I soon realized that the REAL story was Vernon and all his dramas so both 2018 and 2019 ended up being a day by day account of the demise of Privet Drive, the day of the auction and the spat I had with his latest ‘girlfriend’ while last year was devoted to his coercive controlling plotting and scheming, my visit to the cop shop and the subsequent visit to the Magistrates court and my successful application for a restraining order against him
This November has been a delightfully Dursley Drama free month but the US election has more than made up for that. I naively thought that having him out of my life would enable me to get back to proper novel writing
No such luck. It is now half way through the month and I have so far managed to devote only 2 days of it so far to the sad little file for the proper story
I no longer bother about getting worked up about such matters. I have resigned myself to the fact that November is no longer about novel writing but simply about a habit and the observation of a 12 year old ritual
I was almost tempted not to bother after having so much drama with the Big Mac computer and its endless evil spinning beach balls of Doom
But 2020 is not like any other year. So many of the usual rituals have fallen by the wayside due to the Coronavirus so it would be crazy to give up on one of the few sources of stability and ritual that still remain this year
I can always choose to bail out next time
It is reassuring in a way to know that I can always give up if I choose to do so but that I can also turn up in November and churn out the words
So many folks dream of being writers but few want to do the boring stuff of actually turning up to churn out the words. It is more a fantasy than anything
But the strange thing I have discovered is that once I turn up the muse will not be far behind.
On Monday 9th I started getting the weird experience of just pottering around doing every day stuff when I would get a sudden urge to squiggle. I was not in a position to indulge the muse because when she struck, I was out and about without access to a keyboard
Last August I bought a portable Bluetooth keyboard so that I could do some squiggling in November while out and about on coffee crawls but soon realised that it was just so much more efficient to write using the Big Mac
So on Monday 9th I started to get lots of ideas for things to write - none to do with the story that I had hoped to write but that is now no longer the point
But whenever I turned up at 9pm on the Big Mac computer, I would have to run the gauntlet of spinning beach balls, crashing apps and an assortment of obstacles and that was even with the wifi turned off until reaching the daily quota
How I knew that the muse was out and about was simple. I would just get ideas for things to squiggle but also sentences filled with rhymes and alliteration
I resorted to using Twitter to let off steam in little snippets
Of course I could copy and paste all those Tweets to add to the word count but that was hardly worth the hassle. That time could so much more productively be used to churn out new words
So I just used Twitter to squiggle until I could get home to face the onslaught of spinning beach balls on the Big Mac.
But it was interesting to observe the tell tale signs of the inner serpent
So now I am just past half way mark of the month and have well and truly given up any hope of producing a proper story. It is all too hard. But at least I know that I have the discipline to turn off the wifi, sit down and churn out the words. So if the muse ever comes calling some time in the future, I will have my butterfly net ready and waiting
The first time was in 2009 and by coincidence, this year’s days and dates coincide - i.e. In 2009 (and also 2015) the first day of November was a Sunday, which also meant that it is a Black Friday month
The last Black Friday in November was in 2015 and I remember it as if only yesterday because it was the day that a bunch of terrorists attempted to attack a football game in France and managed to kill more than a hundred people in the Bataclan theatre
So aside from those awful anniversaries, what I have noticed over the whole time is that I usually spend the first week in a sluggish snailish state unlike most Nanowrimo squigglers who are full of enthusiasm and bright ideas. They start all bright eyed and bushy tailed and chalk up YUUUGE word counts while I just plod along just managing to reach the daily word count quota of 1,666 words
But then things begin to change. In the second week when they run out of juice and enthusiasm, that is when I usually come into my own
It is almost as if the muse - also known as the Inner Serpent just snoozes all week and snickers. Are you serious about this squiggling stuff? Then PROVE it?
So after 8 or 9 days of turning up and making the daily quota even if it is just constipated crap or incoherent stream of consciousness musings and meanderings, that seems to be enough to satisfy the inner critter so that is when the magic begins
I have noticed that since Petunia died, I am no longer capable of producing any semblance of a proper story but I still do Nanowrimo every November more out of habit than anything else.
So it is no longer about the story itself but simply the ritual and the discipline of churning out those words even if most of them turn out to be dreary dross not worthy of taking up space on a hard drive
The last few years for the first week of November, Vernon Dursley has managed to throw a spanner into the works. If it was not his unexpected announcement on Friday 2nd November 2018 that he had just put Number 4 Privet Drive on the market with the auction in 3 weeks time and insisting that I keep it a secret from Daisy and Dudley Dursley then it was last year’s drama where he turned up unexpectedly at the Lair on the first Monday of the month banging on the door demanding to be let in and telling me that he had gone to the cops to report me as a missing person (because of course if HE did not know where I was then obviously no one else did either)
After several failed attempts to write about Cassandra Quinn with her boring day job of being an auditor at the tax office while dreaming of having her own private detective agency, I soon realized that the REAL story was Vernon and all his dramas so both 2018 and 2019 ended up being a day by day account of the demise of Privet Drive, the day of the auction and the spat I had with his latest ‘girlfriend’ while last year was devoted to his coercive controlling plotting and scheming, my visit to the cop shop and the subsequent visit to the Magistrates court and my successful application for a restraining order against him
This November has been a delightfully Dursley Drama free month but the US election has more than made up for that. I naively thought that having him out of my life would enable me to get back to proper novel writing
No such luck. It is now half way through the month and I have so far managed to devote only 2 days of it so far to the sad little file for the proper story
I no longer bother about getting worked up about such matters. I have resigned myself to the fact that November is no longer about novel writing but simply about a habit and the observation of a 12 year old ritual
I was almost tempted not to bother after having so much drama with the Big Mac computer and its endless evil spinning beach balls of Doom
But 2020 is not like any other year. So many of the usual rituals have fallen by the wayside due to the Coronavirus so it would be crazy to give up on one of the few sources of stability and ritual that still remain this year
I can always choose to bail out next time
It is reassuring in a way to know that I can always give up if I choose to do so but that I can also turn up in November and churn out the words
So many folks dream of being writers but few want to do the boring stuff of actually turning up to churn out the words. It is more a fantasy than anything
But the strange thing I have discovered is that once I turn up the muse will not be far behind.
On Monday 9th I started getting the weird experience of just pottering around doing every day stuff when I would get a sudden urge to squiggle. I was not in a position to indulge the muse because when she struck, I was out and about without access to a keyboard
Last August I bought a portable Bluetooth keyboard so that I could do some squiggling in November while out and about on coffee crawls but soon realised that it was just so much more efficient to write using the Big Mac
So on Monday 9th I started to get lots of ideas for things to write - none to do with the story that I had hoped to write but that is now no longer the point
But whenever I turned up at 9pm on the Big Mac computer, I would have to run the gauntlet of spinning beach balls, crashing apps and an assortment of obstacles and that was even with the wifi turned off until reaching the daily quota
How I knew that the muse was out and about was simple. I would just get ideas for things to squiggle but also sentences filled with rhymes and alliteration
I resorted to using Twitter to let off steam in little snippets
Of course I could copy and paste all those Tweets to add to the word count but that was hardly worth the hassle. That time could so much more productively be used to churn out new words
So I just used Twitter to squiggle until I could get home to face the onslaught of spinning beach balls on the Big Mac.
But it was interesting to observe the tell tale signs of the inner serpent
So now I am just past half way mark of the month and have well and truly given up any hope of producing a proper story. It is all too hard. But at least I know that I have the discipline to turn off the wifi, sit down and churn out the words. So if the muse ever comes calling some time in the future, I will have my butterfly net ready and waiting