It's That Scary Time of Year Again

As October wanes there is a terrible, daunting and spine chilling event on the horizon. If you're thinking Halloween, you're not thinking scary enough. No, I'm referring to Nanowrimo.

Not a greeting from an alien being, but an event that occurs every year in November, where thousands of would-be-writers lock themselves in their fortress of solitude and attempt to hammer out 50,000 words before December 1st. That might be a whole story, it might be a couple of stories or it might even just be the first quarter of an epic fantasy with a dark lord and mysterious strangers appearing at opportune moments. The important thing is getting 50,000 words written on your story(s) before November ends.

I've done Nanowrimo once and it was really, really hard. I don't actually remember if I managed it or not (which suggests I didn't) but it was a great experience for a few reasons;

• It made me sit and write almost every day.
• It forced me to write over 2000 words in every sitting. Well, actually it made me write 500 words one day and then 3500 on another.
• I realised by the end of the process what an incredible ball-ache writing a novel is.

That last may sound like I didn't enjoy it; I did in fact and would highly recommend it. But it is still an indescribably painful, frustrating and emotional process to actually get 50,000 words on screen in such a short time. Even more painful when you read your manuscript and see you've created a monster that should be locked away in the darkest trunk you can find, and then sunk to the bottom of the sea. But that bit doesn't actually matter (another thing I learned). What matters is actually getting those words down and realising that you are capable of doing it. One of the biggest hurdles to writing is the fear factor, and a big fear is that you just can't hack it. But actually, you probably can. It may make you white haired and gibbering in a corner of the room by the end, but you can do it.

I won't be doing Nanowrimo this year, though I am using the month as an incentive to write at least 500 words of something everyday. I have a spreadsheet and everything:

Date	Month	Word Count Goal	Word Count Actual	Difference	Accrual Goal	Accrual Actual	Difference
10/27/2014	October	500	1064	564	500	1064	564
10/28/2014	October	500		-500	1000	1064	64
10/29/2014	October	500		-500	1500	1064	-436
10/30/2014	October	500		-500	2000	1064	-936
10/31/2014	October	500			2500	1064
11/1/2014	November	500			3000	1064
11/2/2014	November	500			3500	1064
11/3/2014	November	500			4000	1064
11/4/2014	November	500			4500	1064
11/5/2014	November	500			5000	1064
11/6/2014	November	500			5500	1064
11/7/2014	November	500			6000	1064
11/8/2014	November	500			6500	1064
11/9/2014	November	500			7000	1064
11/10/2014	November	500			7500	1064
11/11/2014	November	500			8000	1064
11/12/2014	November	500			8500	1064
11/13/2014	November	500			9000	1064

As you can see I doubled my goal yesterday. This blog post will get me today's target. Geeky? Yes. Useful? Definitely. I am a master at procrastinating, even though I really enjoy writing once I'm sitting down and actually doing it. But it's a game me and my subconscious have to play; I'll tell myself to do something, and the other me will say "okay, in a minute". Five hours later and I'm practically screaming at myself to do the thing I want to do. But I still find distractions and shiny things. In fact to understand just how bad this can get go to Hyperbole and a Half to read the post that I think may have been stolen from my own head.

So, in the face of my own never-ending ability to not do the thing I need to do, I need to come up with ways to trick or force myself into it. The above spreadsheet is my whip with which I will hit myself to get shit done. It has worked before, but I think I made the goal too high, so I soon just threw the whip away and played Plants vs Zombies instead. This time I've kept it low; I know I can clear 500 words in under thirty minutes, if the wind blows right, so it's not as daunting as setting 1000 words as the target instead. Hell, this 'ere blog post is already 790 words so I'm totally on target for today.

If you do decide to take on the Nanowrimo challenge - I highly suggest you do if you want to write novels or short stories for a living - then I can only offer the following advice.

• Do play the numbers game: you will not always be able to hit your daily word goal, so there will be some days you can allow yourself to write very little, as long as you write a lot on another day.
• Schedule days off. Seriously, it will stop your brain from dribbling out your ears and down your neck. No one wants brain matter on their clothes.
• Try to get some sort of story plan together before you start. Even if you only plan each day as it happens, it really helps to have thought about what you're going to write before you sit in your writing chair. Otherwise you'll end up staring at the screen as though you're looking into the great empty eyes of Cthulhu before it devours you.
• Do not beat yourself up if you don't actually write 50,000 words in the time frame; the point of this challenge is to get into the habit of writing, and prove to yourself you can churn out the words when you need to. Think of it like exercise: you may not be able to run the whole marathon and get to the end drawing on your hands and knees, but just getting over that finish line is proof that you are a super-amazing wonder-person who may not be able to fly, but it is not through a want of trying. And you have the broken bones to prove it.

If you want to be as geeky as me I really recommend some kind of spreadsheet too. Not only does it allow you to track how you're doing it also means you can make really nifty graphs and stuff to show your good and bad days, or if you add it, your best times of day to write. And then, when you see the fruits of your labours in those pretty charts you can give yourself a pat on the back, and proudly say, "I am a geeky writer".

Victory hedgehog believes in you!

Feelings

Feelings are weird. They rarely behave how you expect them to and when they do it's more puzzling than reassuring. The last two months have been a strange ride, and a big part of me can't believe my dad's been gone for that long; yet it's no time at all. By and large it's been an odd mixture of feeling not a lot before either crashing into a pile of tears or laughing so hard I am yet again crying. But in a good way. I think.

One weird thing I've noticed is anything can set me off laughing or sobbing. I was standing waiting for a tube train at a station I've used a gazillion times. It is also the station my dad used for the 37 odd years he worked in London. This tiny thought barely passed through my squidgy brain and it left behind an emotional storm akin to Hurricane Bawbag. Only a sheer force of stubbornness stopped me from sobbing on that platform.

Two days later I read a tumblr post about a guy playing the Sims while drunk, and it made me laugh so hard I couldn't see or breathe. It's not even that funny. Well, it is, if you're a gamer who also tortured poor little sims in a variety of fucked-up-this-is-what-hell-is-like ways. But it cracked me up to the point my sides hurt.

The rest of the time is even stranger. I can have perfectly normal conversations, I enjoy people's company, I am genuinely emotionally engaged with what's going on. But afterwards it seems like someone turned the volume down or forgot to paint the colours in. It's all just a bit "meh".

Essentially this grief business is a complete and utter mind-fuck; just when you think you're maybe getting a grip on it all, a page from a newspaper will drift past on the wind and remind you of that time your loved one did a thing or said a thing. There's absolutely no frickin similarity between that damned bit of paper and the memory but nevertheless your brain goes, "huh, that reminds me of this time you probably don't want to think about right now, but I'm going to make you think about it anyway, because I'm a sadistic prick who is going to make you have feels - whether you want to or not."

The one thing I can say about all this is I am definitely getting a much better understanding of how to write more rounded characters with major emotional issues. In an odd way keeping a part of myself as an observer is helping, as it provides a distance when all of these feelings get a bit too much. Writing what you know has never rung more true for me than right now.

Book Review: The Name of the Wind - The King Killer Chronicle: Day One

The Name of the Wind - The King Killer Chronicle: Day One
Patrick Rothfuss
2007
Kindle Edition, 2010

I was recommended The Name of the Wind by a friend of mine from work after my dad passed away - she's been through that loss and said it was a great escapist fantasy. She also warned me that people died in it, just in case that might trigger me, but I guessed that might feature; it wouldn't be much of a fantasy story without someone close to the protagonist kicking the bucket. She was also desperate to find someone else to talk to about it, and what better way then to force a friend to read the same thing so you can chat. No forcing was necessary as it turned out; The Name of the Wind is a thoroughly enjoyable yarn. While not original in the slightest, the way it brings the elements together largely works and is extremely easy to read. It's also perfect for those less familiar with fantasy, or younger readers who are looking for their next "boy wizard" fix.

Someone Needs to Call the Doctor

When the news broke that Peter Capaldi was to be the next Doctor Who I was thrilled; he's a great actor, he has the crazy eyed look and he's Scottish. All of these things made me really look forward to seeing him in full Who mode; confusing silly humans while saving them and just generally being incredibly cool. Sadly this is not what I have got so far from the eighth season of the Doctor. So far I've found the stories to be largely dull and predictable; Doctor Who by numbers. There hasn't really been any cool new creatures for the Doctor to face off against. And worst of all the companion, Clara Oswald, has continued to annoy me; seriously, what does she actually do now that her "puzzle" was solved by the last Doctor?

I should say at this point that if you haven't seen any of Season 8 that there are spoilers ahead. Read on at your own risk.