NaNoWriMo 09 Pep Talks - Week 4 - Divorce

We're well into week 4 of NaNoWriMo now. Yes, that's the LAST week. The LAST FEW DAYS! Seems like you've been writing your whole life now doesn't it? But the end is now in sight unless of course NaNoWriMo has shown you that you actually do really like the writing part of writing as opposed to the just bragging about being a writer that most of us used to do.

If you've managed to keep on target so far then all I can say to you is congratulations. At this point you will have well over 40,000 words of fiction which although a little short for publishing purposes is a lot of fiction. Far more than the vast majority of the human race will ever manage. It's actually quite a lot more than many NaNoWriMo participants manage. You're top of the class!

You're firmly in novella territory now which means that even if you run out of plot and hit print today, aside from not being able to say you did 50k in 30 days, no one can really say you're not a winner! In fact, just by being on schedule at this points proves that you're so awesome that you have literally no excuse NOT to win.



If you haven't kept up with your daily quota of words so far then you've probably been having chest pains and palpitations from the point where I said 'last few days'... sorry about that. It's really ok though. If you've written anything at all this month then you've really achieved something. Even if it's just finding out that actually... this novelling business with all the unexpected stress and giving birth to dozens of characters and then being their advisors and councillors isn't really for you. And that's ok. Writing is HARD. Far harder than any non-writer knows. And most of us will admit that you really do have to be at least a little bit crazy to do it well.



Although maybe short story writing is for you? Or maybe you discovered that the reason writing was always so hard for you is that your true calling is actually 1920s hardboiled detective fiction? Or maybe your work just requires a slower pace than 1666 and 2/3 words per day. Or maybe you'll just stick to water polo and extreme ironing. Either way, you no longer have to fear getting old and thinking 'what if I had tried...'. Whether you win or not, whether you produced good fiction or not, it's the trying, the getting past the fear and the actually being a writer that NaNoWriMo is all about. In that sense we all won... and how!

Back to the contest though. Week 4 is a weird one. The weirdest actually! Remember the magic of Week 1 where everything is new and writing is euphoric and oh so easy? Week 4 is the flip side, anti-matter, dark side, evil twin of Week 1. In Week 4 you're comfortable with writing by now whether you're finding it easy or not but somewhere at the back of your mind there's an uncomfortable feeling growing in these last seven days. It's the growing realisation that soon you're going to go through a big transition. Welcome to Week 4 of your papery relationship: Divorce.

Of course not all relationships end with divorce but this one does. Why, I hear you ask? Because it's a freaking book you sicko! You can't have a relationship with a work of fiction and you can't make babies with fictional characters! For those of you that have already tried; shame on you. Go wipe yourself down and take a cold shower.

Fight against it if you want but mark my words; the end is nigh. All good stories follow traditional(ish) story arcs. You have your denouement, your rising action, your climax, your falling action and your resolution (or catastrophe if you're a bit like that).

If you're in the final stages of your work (i.e. your plot is looking to end at the same time as NaNoWriMo) then this will already be happening. Your characters may be starting to hate you. You may have learnt some new things about your characters which may have made you start to hate them. You tell them what to do but they push you around and don't listen. They've become... real.

One of my characters just destroyed an entire city in a giant fireball in order to save the universe and I had no idea it was happening until it happened. I think I may have been standing too close because I don't think I have any eyebrows left!



So now what? God rested on the seventh day (and he knows a thing or too so they say) because he knew that for better or worse there was nothing else he could do (also because he was a god damn show off and wanted to finish his world in six days instead of us mortals doing it in thirty!). But his work was complete. Soon yours will be too. And then... it's time to say goodbye. You may not have seen this coming and it'll probably be painful but you're not part of their world.



It doesn't have to be the end forever though. If you love your work then you'll come back to it. Maybe soon. Maybe not. But eventually you'll have the chance (advisably after at least a month's worth of cooling off) to give things another try in the grand old re-union of second draft revision! That will be the real test. Not of you; you've done the hard work. Mistakes may have been made but invaluable lessons have been learnt; you're a winner! It will be the test of your work.

But for now, concentrate on those last few thousand words. If you've been keeping ahead then these days will be a breeze. Just brace yourself for some closure coming up real soon.



This week's NaNo-tip: Don't make the mistake of getting complacent in Week 4. It may be easy if you've managed to stay ahead but the 30th is always closer than you think. Unplug your internet router, television and phone and tape them up in a cardboard box if you have to and get down to some winning! Just don't forget to get the router out again before the 30th so you can validate.

And if you haven't already: set your time-zone! Or you may get locked out of verification before midnight.

Oh and have you heard about December? It's been officially named NaFiGeSoSleMo: National-Finally-Get-Some-Sleep-Month! Interested? I know I am.

NaNoWriMo 09 Pep Talks - Week 3 - Pipe and Slippers

Hey there, how do you feel? Light headed? Drowsy? Find yourself writing utter crap at lightning speeds because all you want right now is to sleep without waking up with the imprint of keys on your face? Chest feels like its caught in a bear trap? Don't sweat it! It's probably just the caffeine. Take a deep breath, try to get things in perspective and have another cup. And yes, that crippling pain in your left arm probably will go away :)



For those of you with the cojones to not be wasting valuable writing time in A&E, welcome to Week 3 :) Glad you could make it. Week 3 is that special place that all great relationships go when you've been togethered for a while and you start to get comfortable and really know eachother.



You've seen your novel at it's ugliest, you've seen it naked and wordless in the early days of November, you've seen it biting its own toenails off in bed but you don't care and you love it anyway because your novel lets you do it too. Together, you even conceived a plot and brought life into the world. Yeah things are pretty great. You two have come a long way. You're comfortable.

At this point in your relationship, even if you've only been keeping to your basic 1666&2/3 of a word per day you will have written around 25,000 words. By the time you're reading this or if you took my advice and aimed for 2000 words a day, that should be closer to 30,000 words.

That means you can quit (or finish your story) right here, right now and have an original work of fiction of your own creation that is the same length as George Orwell's amazing Animal Farm. How does that feel? Hopefully that will help to keep the fear at bay a little over the next two weeks. Other than not backing up your work (Do it now, I know you haven't bothered recently!) there's not really any way you can lose from this point on. So go ahead and enjoy Week 3. It's a lot like Week 2 but more relaxed, considerably more bleery eyed but generally less self hatred. Keep up the pace for Week 3 and your 50k target will be in sight very soon.

And don't worry if that pain in your left arm doesn't go away. I've heard that publishers cream over half finished post humously published works :)



This week's NaNoTip: If you really can't keep your inner editor in, or if you've written your story down the wrong track and need to correct things earlier on in order to keep going in the direction you want then at this stage, if you're comfortably ahead of yourself it can be excused. But don't throw that old text away! Make a blank document and name it 'Recycle Bin'. Anything you want to delete, paste it into here and save the document in a folder with your manuscript. This not only lets you add words that you wrote but want to remove to your NaNo total, it means that if you ever change your mind or want to spin a failed idea off into another story you can always get it back!

NaNoWriMo 09 Pep Talks - Week 2 - Eating for Two

WHY DID YOU EVER AGREE TO START THIS?! WHY, WHY, WHY, YOU IDIOT!!!

If that's how you feel going into Week 2 then don't worry, it's pretty normal actually. Week 2 is a dark, dirty place packed with monsters and the first of many caffeine related nervous ticks.



There will be much gnashing of teeth here in Week 2, as well as kicking and screaming and near death experiences. That's why in our relationship analogy I like to call Week 2 'The Conception' :)

I also like to refer to Week 2 as the 'I just realised that that bastard Chris Baty lied to my face to get me to do this horrible thing and now I'm trapped!' week... but that's a different story...

Week 2 can often feel like a bit of a proverbial spanner in the works. A bit like roaring off into the lead in a long distance endurance race only to be kicked in the cojones by a spectator on your first lap.



Many people run out of steam sometime in Week 2. Maybe it's because the magic from Week 1 runs out and we realise what we've signed up for. Maybe it's because you just realised that your word count is now (or is approaching) five figures! Yes.. tens of thousands! When you get this far, it's perfectly understandable to get dizzy from looking down at just how far up you've climbed because it's true, you've come a long way! And that can be scary, but you did it. And you can do it again.



Maybe it's that dreaded fear creeping back in as it has a tendency to do. The fear that although you're writing, maybe it's not good enough? Don't listen to it. We all get these thoughts and they can be incredibly destructive if you allow them to bring out your inner editor or worse: stop you from going any further. The only way you're ever going to write good fiction is by persevering with that first draft so you have something to work with and polish at the end of it all. Besides: your work is actually very good. I've been using my blog to hack your computer and I've already got one advance from a publisher. Jokes! I'm not serious. But seriously... thanks for paying off my mortgage ;)

There is one good thing about Week 2 though. If you've been keeping up with your daily 1666 and 2/3 (don't be getting cheap on me with that 2/3!) then you should now realise that you have the beginnings of a book. Or if you're not the kind of person that can bear doing anything in order, you should now have a fair set of key scenes around which your final work can take shape.

Week 2 is when you realise: you're not alone. There's two of you now. You. And the Book. Congratulations! You're eating for two now! Is it a boy or a girl? Actually it's a post modernist work of steam punk erotic fiction. To be more specific: It's a PLOT! You were wondering when that was going to turn up... right? :)



At this point I can also tell you that it's perfectly acceptable to start drinking coffee for two as well. You'll probably need it from here on!



One final word: Stick in there! Week 2 might arguably be the toughest week for many but it gets better... and easier!

This week's NaNo tip: Always try to finish writing every day at a point where you have some good material to continue with the next day. It makes it much easier to get back into the zone and make best use of your time tomorrow :)

NaNoWriMo 09 Pep Talks - Week 1 - Wedding Bells

Well... you did it. It doesn't matter if every word you've written so far is trite, cliche, ungrammatical and hell, outright nonsensical... you did it. Well done you sexy beast.

So what exactly have you done, I hear you ask? You've started. And that means a lot. Pretty much everyone will at some time think about writing a book. A lot of us harbour secret notions of superiority because of this.

As closet novelists, we dabble with half finished short stories or sometimes just notes and ideas written in some long lost arcane short hand that not even we understand. And its surprising how long we can do this for without actually creating anything.

We buy expensive laptops so we can write on the toilet, PDAs for making notes on the fly and expensive pens so that when the coroner digs you out from that pile of half finished manuscripts and cat poop they'll know that you were one of that oh so special breed: a novelist.

But it's all too easy to never get around to any of this. The PDA stays at home because in your pocket it makes you appear to have some odd type of hip growth or mutant genitalia. The laptop is resigned to iTunes and looking up *ahem* reference materials... and the pen well the pen is still there, weeping silently and crying 'please... please! buy me paper... pick me up, caress my nib, squeeze me roughly and rub me all over a virgin sheet!' or maybe that's just me?

None of this applies to you though as you have committed yourself to the single biggest step there is in finishing your novel: you started. And that's far more than most manage. You've broken through the fear, apathy and uncertainty and you're on your way.

So where are we, novelist? Week One, that's where. And that's a very special place because this is where the magic happens. I like to call week one, the honeymoon. Deciding that you were finally going to do this was the wedding and now you've grabbed your partner, thrown them into the passenger seat of a cherry red convertible and for the next few days the world is your winkle. On the open road. You're at the wheel. You decide where to go, what to see and what happens in your own show. You are the creator of worlds, the giver and taker-away of life.



Yes sometimes you will be scared, many times you'll have no idea what you're doing and there's no map. You make the map as you go along. To get through this you're going to have to work hard to keep that FEAR out. Remember that thing that stopped you from doing this for all these years? Well it's back! The good news is that all you have to do to overcome it is press down hard on the accelerator and keep going - because seriously; there's nothing that you can ever write that could be worse than what millions of people have already written :)

If you haven't given it any thought: to be on target for finishing on the last day of the month, you must write exactly 1666&2/3 of a word every day for the rest of the month. By the end of this week you should have written around 13k words.

For sanity's sake and to give you a cushion in harder times, I would suggest aiming for 2000 words a day which really isn't all that much if you take it one day at a time. If you're having an off day, let yourself off with a 1500 worder and you'll still be ahead of schedule.

Oh and make sure your time zone is set correctly on the NaNo website to avoid getting locked out of verification before midnight on the 30th. If you don't verify on time then you'll only be an unofficial winner - Don't say you've not been warned!

So get out there! And don't spare that gas pedal!

And I'll see YOU... in week TWO!



This weeks NaNo-tip: Work-storm! It's like Brainstorming but you do it at work. It works for college too!

In the first week, many of you will have more ideas than you have waking hours to write down. Notebooks if used now will be your friends in the later weeks!

Workstorming in your non-free time can help you fill those notebooks and drive your plot home (or simply keep it in the world of the living, YMMV) in the final days.

You may look like you're hard at work but no one can tell what magic you're concocting in your head. Play out stories, meet new characters. Your non-free time is your opportunity to stop writing for a few hours and come up with new material. Don't waste this time!

Happy Halloween

Cost of not bothering to get up on Halloween = extra day in bed
Cost of buying the nearest thing left to a pumpkin on day after = £1.60
Ending up with a jack-o-lantern made from a Melon = PRICELESS

In other news: what the hell is up with people on Halloween these days? I don't recall October 31st being annual 'dress up as a whore princess / fairy' day...

More gore, less Disney please.

NaNoWriMo 2009 in 2 days!

The Infinite Monkey Theorem posits that a monkey with a typewriter given an infinite time frame would eventually type out the complete works of Shakespeare.

WANNA PROVE THEM RIGHT?! NaNoWriMo has been set up for that exact cause. The only difference is that due to the scarcity of infinite free time, they've cut the time frame down to one month and drastically upped the number of monkeys.

Over the next month (beginning at a second past midnight on the morning of November the 1st and ending at midnight on the 30th of November, hundreds of thousands of people will challenge themselves to write an original 50,000 word novel or die of exhaustion and caffeine abuse (whichever comes first).

Worried that you don't have what it takes? If you never try, you'll never know. Worried that you don't have a good enough idea? Meh, most of us don't. Once you get writing, it all comes to you.

No novel is great after the first draft and yours won't be an exception :o) but by the end of November you'll have created at least the best part of your own work of fiction. Your own world. Yours to behold, brag about and if you put the effort into polishing it up a bit... you can even $ell it!

So come join in, because seriously... what else are you planning to achieve with your dull and pointless life? All you have to do is register for FREE at http://www.nanowrimo.org/

Out There Festival 2009

Last month something pretty great happened in Yarmouth; the 2009 Out There Festival. Over the weekend, Yarmouth was transformed into somewhere you might actually want to be as the dog shit on the pavements dried and shrivelled up, the chavs took their hoods down to see what was going on and the town-wide stench of stale piss and broken dreams was replaced with that of unwashed carnies on a hot day and general mirth (they’re hard to tell apart actually). For 48 hours we experienced our very own mini Koninginnedag. And it was good.

It actually reminded me of the Koninginnedag quite a lot. That’s Queen’s day for those of you who are ignorant of Dutch culture – an annual nation-wide excuse to get high, wander around, get fleeced by opportunistic, price gouging salesmen, be crazy, watch others being crazy and generally take a break from trying to irritate, stab and run each other over.

I never thought that kind of thing would be possible in Yarmouth, but it turns out I was wrong. It seems the chavs just needed to be shown how. And by dotting street performers and attractions around the town, they seemed to start to get the idea and I had a great time wandering through it all in typical Ulyssian fashion.

IMO it's exactly the kind of thing we need in this run down ex-fishing port. It's definitely money better spent than the casinos, fast food franchises, and nightclubs that make up most of the rest of Yarmouth anyway. The outer harbour might not be operational yet, but it seems that the Koninginnedag found its way over already.

CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE

Dave Chameleon




The Gaiety Engine




Abi Collins - Une Femme Exposée


Willet & Patteson's The Amazing Camera Obscura


Zigmund & Froyd




Mandinga Arts Street Artists (Slightly Disturbing Fish)


Didier Pasquette and Company Altitude