Done counted, Nano

Say that in a stereotyped and offensive ghetto accent, and you be knowing that this is a dig at the world. Like Leonardo trying to throw himself in front of the Titanic. The Sundance Kid stopping a train. Every sod plodding from pavement to pavement. The world be schooled. By a novel - my novel  - my Nano novel - c'mon, you know it isn't that simple. Simple is a deception. In this case, a deceptive introduction to my blogpost. Read on. There's a novel in there, although it is more a sod plodding than Romeo or a cowboy.

As per my last, cobwebbed post, Nanowrimo is a month-long, world-wide premise in which to write a 50 000 word novel. That is definitely a deceptive explanation (rule of thumb: assume everything simple is deceptive. Also everything anyone has ever seen or done and maybe the universe). You (would-be author of Water for Elephants, which, yes, was a Nano novel) sign up online, where you are part of a community of coffee-addicted variations of the writer archetype. You stake out and mine your claim via a dashboard, which shows stats like your word count per day. (Yes, thanks, I get it, computer gnome. I am inadequate.)

You can ONLY start on the 1st (no head starts, fools) and finish by the 30th (late validations have to be done personally). You have to write from scratch - no existing novels and such, because we all have a lame one nursing itself somewhere. Every day you update your word count (no, not an imagined one 'cause then you are just a fool wasting time you could spend writing). Your dashboard updates the stats, so you know for example that it will take you 20 more days to finish (and you're on the 21st), and you have 10 920 words to go and an average daily word count of 3.

The overriding and oversimplified objective is to adapt to the discipline of being a writer. A real one. Not just a wannabe one with a lame novel. Contrary to legend, the trick to being a writer is like any other profession: you work hard. Especially since society in general has no respect for copyright and actively views it as an occasion to 'stick it to The Man'.

Let me duck out of Nano to explain something: Copyright, like general labour law, is a system to reward artists for their intellectual property. Without it, we rely on government subsidy and censorship is um bad. Do I need to explain?

Writers (and musicians and artists) sell their copyright, along with their book, to publishers, because (no matter who tells you otherwise) a self-published author does not usually have the resources to edit, typeset, print (if they need to), distribute, market and monitor sales of their book. In return, the author receives a cut of the sales value (net, mind, not gross). The books that do sell, pay my rent. Or not. So thanks for believing the fools who tell you piracy is a moral necessity.

You can see the link, right? I have to work harder to make less or I stop writing and find something less rewarding but more lucrative - no, that means something else is more rewarding. My argument falters like that of intellectual property pirates.

And... we're back!

To finish your novel on time, you must write 1 600 words a day. I am a trained and experienced writer, and I can usually push out 500 words a half hour or 1 200 a hour. Should I wait while you do the maths? That is about 1,5 hours a day. Hours stolen from the hours you are not at work. Stop cooking? Stop cleaning? Stop sleeping? Drink flagons of potent coffee (basically grounds)? Lookee, you really are a writer! (Here's the secret: the stereotype has always been true because writing requires discipline. More so now that everyone and their pets think they are writers. Lookee, I just pounded on these keys and then Kindle bought it and 3 people read it!)

Focus, focus.

For the first three years, I retired early: before 10 000 words (twice), before 30 000 words and before I started. Even then, I was fairly disciplined about writing for at least half an hour a day. Sylvia Plath wrote 1 500 words a day. (Ya' know before she bought into the patriarchal system and her life went avocado-shaped.) That fact has always inspired me. As you will know if you read her letters and journals, she was prodigious - far more prodigious than one novel would suggest.

This time, what with being part-time unemployed, I had an hour and a half to spare, and I was searching for a purpose. I needed a win. Also a cool pseudonym for some things I need to say. (In the end, I used my real one. Some things gotta be said and someone gotta back them up (and not back down. Fools). Adopt ghetto accent again.)

30 000 and then 42 000 were the trickiest. Around 30 000, I realised that my joke of about 20 000 words was true: my novel had literally lost its plot, it was descending into a teen romance (don't worry, I squashed this pandering to the patriarchy by redirecting her energy) and (now this is unlike me) all description had been replaced with dialogue and facial expressions. Dialogue? What newly creviced crevice of my soul is this? Luckily, I still didn't have a plot. I defy Aristotle, too.

At 42 000, I was close but so far. I started to just spew rubbish, pretending to realign the plot and develop characters and even link it to a previous lame novel licking itself right under my chair. I jumped from section to section because I couldn't remember what had happened and I didn't have time to read back. This one squashed itself, thank goodness. I had no clue how to do it myself.

Sitting in a coffee shop, on my sixth cup of the day and with the sugar of a chocolate danish animating my fingers, I pounded out 5 000 words with only a brief paralysis before the last hour and (I confess) during most of it.

As I looked to the corner of the screen, I yelped and did a dance in my chair that was mostly just moving my hands up and down, ghetto style. (I looked cool, fools. Haters.) I copied the creature and pasted it on my dashboard. I pressed 'Validate' with shaking hands (my hands shake normally. I think they are alive and trying to escape my body, digit by digit). The browser burbled and (really quickly especially for SA's bandwidth) congratulated me. I had written 50 250 words (of dialogue). I scrolled down... to claim my... badge. And... discounts on merchandise. Err...

None of the people exhaustedly trying to suppress the energy of their tiny people turned to acknowledge me, not even my impressive in-the-chair ghetto dancing.

It ended the way it began (and had never ended before). Quietly. To the aroma of coffee and chocolate croissants. I have 50 000 words, although not a novel, contrary to Nano's hopes. Please, you have read (at least this) my blogposts. You should know that I employ most of the words in the dictionary, instead of just the word dictionary. I barely even have a middle - just dialogue and facial expressions (read the sample on my profile and you will understand). Halfway through (calculate that however you like) I realised that I had a solution to the inertia of my first novel. I had the plot and it had been sitting on my nose like a freckle all along (it's difficult to pick out).

Oh, are you waiting for something? Oh, right, you want to know what the plot is. Dear fools, then you wouldn't buy the novel (or pirate it and therefore rob me of all acknowledgement of this incredible achievement) and I will continue to be partly unemployed and eventually my service provider will rob me of data because it doesn't believe in not getting money for its service and I won't have any. Thieves!

To convince you to ghetto dance with me, I dare you to Nano it up next year. Feel the muscle burn in your brain and fingers, the paralysis, the aches from sitting in a chair on your legs for too long (bad habit). Feel the Nano. And then, let's talk international property law and why I should be your very employed agent.

Nanowrimo: the countdown

What month is it? Yes, November. Yes, a countdown to religious holidays involving fake trees and gold tinsel. I bet you didn't guess correctly! Oh wait, if you didn't guess from the title of this post, please shut down your browser and never come here again. Yes, it's Nanowrimo!

For the (majority of) people who don't know this is an acronym, it is. It stands for: National Novel Writing Month. Because we are all one nation on the internet? No, because we aren't, unless you are a first-world hipster looking at everything through rose-tinted Google Glass. You can keep reading, but only if you take that headset off, because you look less like a sci-fi hero than a real-life dork and not the cool kind.

I am guessing it started as an American campaign and went global. Lack of foresight, but the alliteration works. The campaign encourages people to write by creating communities. Every November, aspiring authors log in to their accounts (most have forgotten their passwords and need to reset - not me, of course. Of course. No, not me) and fill in the details of their project: title, summary, extract and cover.

There are a couple of rules:

1. It has to be a new novel, not one you have already started.
2. You cannot copy and paste ten times to reach the word count (this seems obvious but if not, time to, yes, shut down your browser).
3. You 'win' when you reach 50 000 words. You win, I win, we all win. Like a marathon where we all get medals for finishing, at which point I'm wondering why I am putting myself through this.

We got here sooner than I expected. I signed up in 2010. I lost in 2010, 2011 and 2012. I didn't even try in 2013. I lost because a week into the marathon, I asked myself why I was putting myself through this.

Why? you ask. Why do you writers pretend writing is so difficult? We all write every day: emails, application forms, notes. Yes, you do (and may I point out, from an editor's point of view, that if you didn't have spell and grammar check, your 'writing' would be illegible. And even then people can't tell the difference between 'its' and 'it's'). I am all for you writing 50 000 words of emails. Please don't send it to me, but go ahead.

The Most Difficult Thing about writing is resisting the urge to purge the file or set the pages alight. This urge should take hold of you at about word 14. If as a first-time writer you make it to 4 000 words, I will actually read your (pending) 50 000 word email.

I have been writing, properly, for ten years. I still have to wrestle that urge and chain it under my desk. Like David Copperfield, he will free himself, but it gives me a headstart. I first tracked his movements by writing stream-of-consciousness style for 30 minutes a day. No lifting pen from paper except to turn the page (and unless you print and between words, but you get it). It takes about 20 minutes to start writing fluidly.

Where do you find 30 minutes a day? I don't know, it's your schedule. If you are serious about this, you will quit gym and write instead. And potentially die early of heath problems. Which would make you a bona fide writer. I used to write first-thing in the morning (Jessica Simpson swears by this), but I am not a morning person. Unless you count waking up at 11. So now I write in the evening.

Sylvia Plath (of whom I am such a fan that I hate Ted Hughes with a passion) wrote 1 500 words a day. She started the habit late in high school and published a number of poems and short stories in college. 1 500. That was the length of some of my essays in undergrad.

So ten years of wrestling the monster of writer's block later, I can write about 500 words per half hour, sometimes more if I don't edit. That's an hour to an hour and a half. Sorry, how long did you say it took you to write 4 000 words? Because it just took me two days.

In other words, writing is a discipline. Write the same amount of words at the same time in the same place. Be prepared to do this for years and years. Train yourself to wrestle that monster. In addition, you will need to do research and be prepared to burrow into the bits of yourself you wouldn't stare down in a lit room. Or maybe you get it right first time. It happens. I hate you.

We have bumped into Nanowrimo again. It is November, after all. One of the functions of Nano (apart from creating a community) is to train you to do all of those things above (I don't need to recap do I?). I have gone through periods of writing religiously (I mean that word seriously - if I had a single belief, it would be in words) and of letting the words build up until I am a little volcano. So Nano is definitely worthwhile.

But a week has always been my limit. If you do the maths, you need to write about 1 600 words a day to finish on time. Remember: an hour and a half. I used to work a lot. For various reasons that even therapy won't fully explain. Identity, self-worth, self-destruction. That is a bleak path, dear reader. Now I know better, although knowing isn't always understanding. So finding that hour and a half when you work at least 10 hours a day and don't eat lunch is difficult.

So my strategy had two parts:

1. Start strong: write as much as you can in the first week.
2. Continue strong on the weekends, when you have time.

I mentioned I never made it past number 1? Except for 2012, when I wrote 28 000 words, which is about 17 days. It sounds like the home stretch, but it isn't, it really isn't.

You can see this coming, can't you? Or you've already checked my profile. Eight days in and I average close to 2 000 words per day. A fist bump and a happy dance. That is more than 15 000 words. In one week. One week, my friends, just over an hour a day. One hour.

What did writing replace? Not gym. I don't do gym. I just make promises I haven't kept yet. Well, I went out on my own, business-wise, and am planning a little sum'ing sum'ing. Stay tuned for me crowdsourcing your wallet. Technically, writing counts as part of my work day. Since my work day is 10 hours, I am just retrieving a couple of them.

While I work, that monster has a seat next to me, but he is on the edge of it, watching the words spill on to the electronic page. Sometimes he helps me find a synonym. He also reminds me to eat lunch.

I think this is the year I am going to win Nanowrimo. I have no illusions that this novel is publishable. The story is going nowhere and comprised mostly of dialogue. I can't think of names for most of the characters and unravelling the pronouns would be a full-time job. But it is giving me more insight into my first (and real) novel. (Which is, oddly, the premise of that novel.) The novel will have six dedications and Sylvia Plath is the first and Nano the last.