The End of a Very Long Stick
I'm not doing NaNoWriMo this year. I'm keeping it at the end of a very long stick. There's a very strong possibility that I may never do NaNoWriMo again. If you're wondering what on earth “NaNoWriMo” is, it's a pnemonic for “National Novel Writing Month” – an annual challenge on the internet to write a 50,000 word novel during November.
I did it last year – it's ticked off my bucket list. I would like to say “I got the t-shirt”, but I can't – even though they sell them – I didn't like the design, and thought they were over-priced. I did get a certificate – that I printed out, and that probably ended up in the bin a few days later. I didn't like the design of the certificate either.
I suppose in some ways my successful completion of NaNoWriMo last year felt a bit like “ The Emperor's New Clothes”. I had held the challenge up like some sort of talisman for years – an insurmountable goal that only the most idiotic might throw themselves at. The writing equivalent of an ascent of the south face of Annapurna. I wrote the required 50,000 words in the first two weeks, and then had to keep quiet about it because I didn't want to make anybody feel bad. Of course my words were utter garbage, but there were a lot of them – enough to get me over the finish line laughably easily.
Maybe I'm discrediting my own superpower – the ability to generate vast quantities of forgettable rubbish. Perhaps this whole blogging lark served as a warm-up act to the main event. I wonder if it could go on my CV? “Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound write unimaginable quantities of harmless, directionless guff at the drop of a hat”.
This whole “writing” thing is kind of addictive though. On more than one occasion over the last year I've sat down with the computer and thought “I'm going to invent some sort of minimal writing environment that cuts out distractions”. Of course then I tinker with the computer all evening, and don't actually write anything. The latest product of this ridiculous bent was the discovery that you can run MS-DOS in a window on any computer, run WordStar, WordPerfect, or Word, and pretend it's 1990 all over again.