Many brave souls
I know are currently involved in the hugely impressive NaNoWriMo – national
novel writing month. These
diligent writers commit to scribbling 50,000 words of a novel in one tiny month. Not
only that, it’s November, national present buying month if my bank account is
anything to be believed, where cosy fires and Christmas to-do lists flutter
their procrastination-inducing eyelashes and before you know it, you’re
wondering where you stashed the Advent Calendar and mild panic sets in that you
may, in fact, have forgotten to buy one.
The brilliance of
Nano is in its time frame. There is nothing like a deadline to get those
fingers typing, those characters inventing a story for you while you sit,
almost as a by-stander, and watch your tale appear on screen. At the last
count, Nano writers had written over two billion words and we’re only three
quarters of the way through the month! www.nanowrimo.org/
Another year and
I could be tempted. This November, however, I needed the opposite of NaNoWriMo.
I had a
wonderfully indulgent autumn of total immersion in my novel, following interest
from an agent with whom I’d dearly love to be associated. (Yes please! All
wafts of fairy dust always gratefully received.) The rest of my novel and an
alternative ending, or three, submitted, I finally raised my head from the keyboard
and could hardly bare to look at the carnage that the total immersion had left
in its wake. The light fittings belonged to a disused stately home, spiders
weaving works of art which almost stretched the length of a room; a battered
cupboard sat hopelessly in the middle of the study despairing that anybody
would ever bother to take it to a better place and it would take three bags to
cart off the reams of post I’d saved for unnecessary filing. 
Thus, I embarked
on my own NOTNaNoWri month whereby I banned myself from any writing of book two
until Advent descends. I am still writing short stories, book reviews and
teaching but the rest of the time I’m … tidying up.
It isn’t without
some trepidation that I set about my NOTNaNoWriMo. There’s a loud voice in my
head which normally prevents excessive expenditure of time on such frivolous
past-times as domesticity, by instilling fear. It’s the fear that if I do not
keep writing my current novel, I will simply forget. I will forget what I’m
writing, I will forget where it’s going and I will forget how to write.
This isn’t helped
by the anti-dorphins, those pesky little destructors which have the opposite
effect of the endorphin rush I get from story writing and which need to be
firmly quashed by constant busy-ness.
 |
| Look! Nothing on the floor. |
But it’s going
well so far. Three times last week I went shopping. From a mere spot on the
post-total-immersion to-do list, my Christmas presents are almost all bought.
I’ve had coffee with friends, been out to supper, met with my Mum and my sister,
the latter lives five hours away, and even indulged in a full week of illness.
Then, I scrubbed the entire house from top to bottom – pictured room above, clearly excepted.
This is in preparation for the journey to the Floor Of The Office.
It may be that
I’m blogging now because I’m left with the study
project and no decent plan of where to start. But start I will. Today. I
have ten days left of NOTNaNoWriMo and, as mentioned earlier, there’s nothing
like a deadline for complete strangulation of inertia. If I can make it through
to the carpet, I’ve been promised a new desk. I’ll let you know how I get on.
And to the
thousands of NaNoWriMo writers, I wish you the very best of luck - not that you’ll be reading this, of course, as you type feverishly at your desks, in total writing immersion. But I hope we can meet for a cyber mince pie or two together in December?
