It’s the half-way point of the NaNoWriMo and I’m still at it¹. Week one was fantastic with the over 11 thousand words falling into place in the first two session. The first day came in at 3500 words and the second at a little over 8000. After that things slowed down a bit but I still managed to average above the target of 1667 words a day. That’s just as well because I missed a few days in week one and the last week has been something of a bust with only two days writing done in the last seven days. Right now I’m across the 20k barrier² and just short of the 25 thousand half-way mark. I’m pretty happy with the way things are going though and reckon I’ll be back on target by the end of Sunday.

It definitely needs editing and trimming and I can already see ways in which inconsistencies have crept in. I’ve also managed to introduce a little sub-plot which right now seems to have absolutely no purpose and I’ve completely failed to establish certain things about my central character which are important.

I can fix all that next month though. For now it’s about getting the 50,000 words done even if they do edit down to about 20,000!

On the practical side I’ve been doing all the writing on my MacBook using Jer’s Novel Writer. It’s a pretty good tool but it’s had a few revisions recently which broke and then fixed the word count. The annoying part was that I wasn’t able to get onto the message board to report the bug. I had to register but I’m still waiting for my confirmation email so I can log in. Boo!

The daily word count which I enthusiastically tweet about on Twitter is based on the figure reported by Jer’s Novel Writer. My daily totals were based on the word count that NeoOffice reports³. Today I started using the NaNoWriMo word count utility and discovered that it doesn’t agree with what NeoOffice says. I’m going to go with what NaNoWriMo say – they’re the ones deciding whether I’ve passed or not.

I’m something of a notorious procrastinator so one way in which I warm up before starting a session is to do some deliberate procrastination. I check my mail, read my RSS feeds and look for any missed tweets on Twitter. I spend about 20 or 30 minutes just generally browsing the web and then get started. I’ve also done most of my writing in my dining room rather that at the desk in my study. I reckon there are too many distractions in there⁴ and if I sit at the end of the dining table I can actually put my feet up on the other chairs. I’m almost in a reclining position as I write.

I’m looking good in good shape to hit the 50,000 word target at the moment but part of me secretly hopes that 50,000 words won’t be enough to actually finish this thing and I’ll have to keep going through December too!

– Fintan

Between the number of posts I churned out over last few weeks, and the spike in traffic after my recent post¹ on Enterprise Ireland and Auctomatic, I’ve managed to break a lot of the mouse organ’s records² this month. That’s probably going to change over the next few weeks though because I’ll be going dark for November. I won’t be completely silent as I hope to post a few short pieces from time to time and I already have a few posts lined up.

The reason I’ll be going dark is that I’ve decided to take part in this years NaNoWriMo challenge. I’m probably mad because I’ve just looked at my calendar for the month of November and I reckon that between a trip to France in the middle of the month and a visit from my U.S.-based mum (plus a bunch of other stuff) I really only have two and a half weeks to write my 50,000 word novel. This should be fun.

But sod it I’ve been planning this for a year so I’m going to do it. I’ll keep you posted on how I’m getting on.

– Fintan

Having been pointed to it by this entry in Guy Kawasaki’s blog, I recently read Hugh MacLeod’s manifesto “How To Be Creative” on ChangeThis¹. It really is quite simply the best thing I’ve ever read on creativity. This honest and realistic appraisal of not only how to be creative but what it means to us personally, applies as equally to business as it does to writing or painting or whatever². Along with some down-to-earth advice from a former colleague, reading it has helped finally inspire me to just go ahead and dive into a couple of projects I’ve been researching and contemplating for a while.

My biggest problem whenever I’ve sat down to work on a project of my own is a) the fact that I’m a procrastinator of the highest order and b) I find my ideas dry up pretty fast, especially when I’ve more important things to do like browse Wikipedia. I also tend have very narrow creative windows. For example, I woke up early this morning with the basic shape of this post buzzing in my head and had to get up and start working on it before I lost it. Generally when I sit down to write or work on a technical project I find that rather than my mind filling the blank page, the blank page fills my mind. One of my current writing projects has been on the boiler for over a year now and while I have been actively researching it during that time I’ve done precious little writing. Meanwhile another project (a psuedo-business idea) is still little more than a crude diagram on a piece of paper stuck to the wall above my desk with some electrical insulation tape. My excuse for that is that I’m still learning Ruby on Rails.

So where am I going with this? Myself and Rachael were in Kilkenny last weekend and while browsing around a bookshop I picked up a copy of “No Plot? No Problem” by Chris Baty, one of the founders of the NaNoWriMo competition. NaNoWriMo is the National Novel Writing Month and is a high-intensity, 31-day competition to produce a 50,000 word novel. I’d heard of it before but I’d never really taken too much notice of it³. It was only when I read Baty’s book, a sort of rough-guide to the NaNoWriMo, that I realised what it was really all about. Essentially it’s about getting the job done by setting yourself a deadline and allowing you to hit that deadine by putting away all of the excuses and blockers. The only thing that is important in the end result is that you have 50,000 words. Quality is not important, that can come with the next draft if you decide you want to go ahead with it, so instead of constantly revising the one page you’ve written you simply plough ahead and write the whole lot. You can make it readable later.

Although Baty’s book has a couple of holes and contradicts itself in a few places (and also has a some ideas that go against the really great ideas in MacLeod’s manifesto)⁴, the basic idea of NaNoWriMo is still brilliantly simple – set yourself a deadline and get something out there. Worry about making it perfect later. This concept applies to both the novel in my head (and in a pile of research books beside my desk) and the psuedo-business idea in the crude diagram on my wall. It’s a lesson I should have learned from my years with a startup company⁵ but it’s certainly one that I’m going to put into action in the coming months. You never know, I might even have written a 50,000 word novel by the end of November :-)

– Fintan