NaNo-NaNu

I'm a little sad that the month is over and I didn't get to use most of my incredibly clever NaNo pun post titles. I had high hopes for NaNoRingo, NaNo-RifFic and BaNaNoWriMo, among others.

Maybe next year.

To complete the update on NaNo, I should point out that a lot of the things I didn't like about the experience are largely due to the improvised nature of the book I was writing, and have little to do with NaNo itself.

I think overall this was a great thing for me to have done. I'm delighted that I stumbled upon it when I did, and do feel proud to have produced a complete-ish work in such a short time. Even if I do throw it away.

And the next one will be better. I'm 18 pages into another project, and am going to try to keep plugging away until I finish both of the novels I have outlined at the moment. The aim is to complete them both by the end of February. And maybe by that time, I'll find something salvageable from my NaNo output as well.

I don't know if I will do NaNo next year. There are a lot of variables involved with that. My guess would be that I will. I think the positive results outweigh the crappiness of most of the output. At least I have something on paper (well, not actual paper, but still) which I am told is the hardest part.

My brother said something to me a couple of months ago about how writing is hard because you have to be "in the mood" to write to produce anything good. I remember telling him at the time that I didn't think that was true. Being in the mood helps of course, but writing when you're not in the mood helps a lot too. I think waiting until the mood strikes is the reason why so many of the people who want to write a novel never actually finish a novel. And I think that might be the idea behind NaNo in the first place. Get it out within a supportive community and onto paper and don't worry about how tinny your dialogue is or how turgid your prose has become. That's all stuff you can fix in editing, a step you'll never get to if you don't write it down in the first place.

I promise to update you on the plot to steal Xmas soon.

GSOTD (Google Search of the Day): "dirk's halloween party 2006 liverpool." At first, I was mad because I thought that Dirk, semi-regular poster to this blog and the boy who cried werewolf, had had a Halloween party and didn't invite me. That he might have done this in England was even more galling, because he knows I love England. I replicated the search and can only conclude that no one named Dirk had such a party. It's a little perplexing how they ended up here, though, since those search words were likely spread out over four or five of my posts.

Go read: Hal Spacejock's guide to all things Hal Spacejock. There are links on the side to take you to other places like a look at the seamy underworld of publishing. He's published, so he likely knows more than you. It looks as though there is an awful lot of fun going on at his site, as well. From the looks of things in my first visit, Hal has some stuff in common with the "Stainless Steel Rat" books, although I'm guessing he's better written.