National Novel Writing Month

I'm blaming this all on Loki, who pointed me to NaNoWriMo. Anybody who might possibly want to talk me out of this, would now be very welcome to bash me over the head with something Large and Heavy. The general idea is to write a 50,000 word novel between 1st November and 30th November. Of the same year. It's really very easy to think of reasons not to do this. Although I'm sure it could go on almost infinitely, the list could start off a little like this:

1. I will just be settling into my University course. I should probably anticipate doing some work for this. I'd really rather not get kicked out.
2. I will hopefully be forming some kind of offline social life. This will hopefully involve drinking, and sitting around spending time. Rather than scribbling frantically.
3. I've never finished a serious piece of writing in my entire life. Not for want of starting, however.
4. I'm going to have a hard enough time keeping up with Every Single One, without this additional project.
5. I've continuously pitched myself as a reader, and not a writer. I should try to keep with this identity, as I'm comfortable with it, and have no particular burning desire to branch out. And with this I'd no longer have much time to read.
6. Bitten is in November... actually that could work out quite well...
7. I never managed to hit a deadline once in my entire essay-writing or coursework career. Not once.
8. I'm not sure Cathy would survive the experience.
9. I'm not sure I'd survive the experience.

Having said all that, it really does sound worthwhile. In an insanely masochistic never-going-to-work kind of way. And I'd only have to write roughly 2000 words a day, given 5 days completely free. And whilst I'm sure most of it would be complete junk, I'm sure I'd manage to fit in some marginally entertaining ramblings in there somewhere. It would be character-building. I could discover something profound about myself. Someone please show up and talk me out of this, because I just failed spectacularly to do so myself. I'm going to start carrying a notebook around with me and gather ideas. Then I'm hopefully going to sit down come november and just start writing. I mean, either I'll get something down, or I won't, and how public can the failure be, it's not like I just announced my over-ambitious intentions to absolutely anybody with net access... Oh, wait.

On a reallife note, I just ate breakfast. At two in the morning. My theory is that I won't be up in time to enjoy the meal when I'm supposed to, but it's my favourite meal of the day, so I'm damned if I'm going to miss it. It occurred to that someone pedantic might ask what the fundamental difference between this and a late-night snack is. I think it's fairly obvious, in that late-night snacks do not involve orange juice. There were also far fewer calories included. Late-night snacks, in my less-than-humble opinion, tend to have far more chocolate ice-cream and less hot-buttered-something on the menu. Unless it's a hot-buttered someone. That's definitely a late-night thing. Bit confused as to when I'm supposed to brush my teeth.

And by the way, has anybody else noticed how it always takes one-and-a-half goes of the toaster to get something just right? It doesn't matter what toaster you have, or what setting you put it on. One go and you can hardly see the difference, and two complete goes and the fire-alarm goes off.

Posted by Missiedith at September 4, 2003 2:15 AM