Apparently I don’t have enough to do. Also, when I fail, I like to fail big (and publicly, if at all possible.) That’s why I’ve decided to participate in this years National Novel Writing Month. Crazy, you say? No crazier than any of the other “creative efforts” I’ve attempted in the past ten years. Hell, this one doesn’t require any more resources than the time it will take and a modest laptop. I wish I could say that of my film career. My credit rating wishes I could say that of my film career as well.
If you’re not familiar with National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo as it has come to be known), it’s an organized effort to get people to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. While it might seem a bit ambitious to try and write 50,000 words in a month and even more ambitious to have those words form something like a story, the organizers (and several friends who’ve done it before) say it’s totally possible.
Speaking of friends, I have conscripted a few to participate in the event with me and write their own terrible novels. I really did conscript them rather than ask them. This is one of those things where you just have to tell people to “get in the car” and don’t really let them worry about the destination. Really, it’s motivation for me, as I’m going to look like quite an idiot if I encourage people to do this and fail to do it myself. Two of these people live in my house, so we’ll be able to “support” (read: mock) each other as we go.
Interestingly, I just noticed that Wordpress here counts words as you type. I just managed to crap out 250 words in a little over fifteen minutes. Considering that one needs to average 1667 words per day to write 50,000 words in 30 days, I really only need to write for around one to three hours a day to make this happen.
Like many people, I’ve started writing several novels. I’ve never finished one, though I did get pretty far along with my last attempt. My hope is that by tearing through this one in a month, I’ll have a reasonable piece of work (or crap) to start editing.
I’ve also decided to write this novel using only open source software. I was going to use a Mac emulator running System 7 and Word 5 (the best word processor ever written, im my opinion), but once I got it running I felt like the whole setup was a little dodgy, even for me. Instead, I installed a relatively recent laptop I had with Ubuntu 9.10 and AbiWord. I wanted a machine that would be dedicated to this process, so when I sit down at it to write I don’t flail about and do anything else. I’m even going to disable the wireless during designated writing time so I don’t fall into a lolcat pit whilst doing “research”.
I’ll be updating my wordcount on my NaNoWriMo page, but I’ll also be updating it here, in the sidebar. Oh, and please, do me a huge favor: Do NOT encourage me. It has been my experience that encouragement does nothing for me. If you want to help, what I need now is cold, hard derision. Feel free to tell me how much I suck if my daily word count falls below 1667. Tell me I’ll never amount to anything. Ridicule my efforts as much as you can. This is the only effective motivation you can provide. The more you ride me, the more likely I am to defy you and succeed.
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