NaNoWriMo 2009: An Orgy Of Words – The Halfway Point Review
Warning: This blog post contains letters, numbers and other special characters put together in such a way to create adult language, situations, language, characters and language that you may find offensive. This blog post should not be viewed by any one under the age of 18, over 65, those with a heart condition or just people with general good taste.
The Introduction
After participating in National Novel Writing Month in both 2007 and 2008 and winning both events, this year I changed tactics with my approach to NaNoWriMo 2009. Firstly, I decided to join with the Liverpool region to attend write-ins after defecting from Manchester region affiliation during the previous year's event. Secondly, to make it a little easier on my wrist and possibly increase the word count I decided to write most of my words on a computer. This is in contrast to previous events where both entries were handwritten.
Now, I know what you are thinking:
"Matt, you know that I love the fact that you are taking a novel approach to NaNoWriMo this year but since we have never seen any of your other NaNoWriMo series of novels, how do we know that you are writing anything at all and not just making your word count up when you post at the end of everyday on Twitter?"
I am almost lost for words over how insensitive you can be but what is galling most of all is I can't believe that you would use the word "novel" like that. The fact that you have used the word in that way has made me lower my admiration for you so much that I may well have to think twice about standing alone outside your house at night. From now on, I will no longer do it in inclement weather. I hope you are satisfied now because you won't be satisfied by me.
Getting back to my original theme, after your rude interruption, let me set the scene for you. It begins, as any clichéd novel would on a dark and stormy night, and not a dark and stormy knight, which is how I began my 2007 NaNoWriMo effort which known throughout the world by people who have just read this blog post as the seriously titled coming of age story that is Donkey Donkey Donkey Donkey: A Trilogy In Almost One Part. Are you sitting comfortably in a Health & Safety approved ergonomic chair? Then I will begin…
The Prologue Meet
In the run up to the actual event there was a Liverpool region pre-meet set up by the Liverpool municipal liaisons, the ever lovely Kaite and the sometimes lovely Rosie. This took place on October 17, 2009 at the Egg Café in, and I know you are going to say that it wasn’t the plot twist you were hoping for but be patient that will come, Liverpool. It was an opportunity for those of us who were new to the group to meet up, have cheese on toast, generally procrastinate and get a psychological advantage over our future literary rivals.
I met some brand new people and some slightly enhanced versions of others. By all accounts a great time was had by all. And by all accounts, I mean the people that I bothered to ask. This was me and me alone as I had forgotten to ask anyone while I was still in the Café. Iregardless, and not irrigation though I was quite thirsty by that point, a quick show of hands was done on the train ride home because I couldn’t find any dry stalks of cereal plants for a straw poll. The ones I did find were stuck to the bottom of my shoe and were wet due to the aforementioned dark and stormy conditions. I decided that I would go back to Liverpool.
Act I: Everyman for Themselves
At some point before November 1st 2009 but after the dawn of time and more specifically after the Prologue Meet definitive plans were put in place to hold a November 1st a Kick-Off Write-In Party, which was to be held at the stroke of midnight to enable those that had been belles of the balls on Halloween to turn to withered up word pumpkins on the stroke of midnight.
After a search for a hotel room proved unsuccessful, though I’m sure if they had let me past the front desk I could have walked down any corridor and gone through any door and found one, but apparently that was, in the words of the Head of Security, “causing a scene” and “wouldn’t be permitted” and he promptly escorted me from the building.
After the kindness of strangers let me have a bed for the night, and by kindness I mean those unfortunate enough to have left their doors unlocked, I was taken to the Everyman in preparation for the midnight beginning of NaNoWriMo 2009.
At this point you may be wondering why there are no photographs; well the simple answer is I didn’t take a camera with me. I can set the scene for you though, if you imagine a dimly lit room with people making shadow puppets on the wall filled with trendy artwork you have the wrong end of the stick entirely, if indeed there was a stick at all, but without photographs we will never know.
As we sat there on October 31st after the shadow puppet furore had died down and watched nervously as the clock ticked down to midnight, people became chatty and nervous desperate for a plot, and to placate the screams ranging from “What the hell am I doing here,” and “Where did you get those roast chestnuts from?” to “I can’t believe that I don’t have the biggest boobs here” and finally “I’ve got hot nuts in my pants,” one of our intrepid MLs, the beguiling Rosie, produced a pep talk to calm the fears. But I’ll tell you this now, it wasn’t my fault. I was nervous and stressed, okay?
Rosie’s pep talk was nothing short of a revelation. What it revealed I can’t quite remember because I’m not fond of writing things down. And I don’t like just making things up, but I will say that she gave me Love Hearts and just by that act of sheer bribery was enough to win my vote and my heart.
So after months of procrastination about thinking of a plot for NaNoWriMo 2009 (and working on my other fiction) I had finally run out of time. I had only a title that I had managed to come up with 48 hours prior and as the clock struck 12, I turned from an embittered procrastinator into an embittered procrastinator with writer’s block.
Day One: 12:00 to 2:00
Now I was in shock. I sat at a table surrounded by people who seemed to know that the hell they were doing. How DARE they? Didn’t they know that it was my time to NOT shine? Clearly not, since they were beavering away (and some were even writing about building dams) and bashing out the words, without even giving the words a chance to fight back.
Since I had decided to write most of my novel on computer and not blood and parchment as in previous years it left me at a disadvantage at this particular write in. So there I sat with my notebook and pen before me and stared at other people hoping that I could steal their plot thoughts.
Since my mind reading efforts were a complete bust, though that isn’t entirely true as I did manage to bend a spoon, I had to knuckle down and write some words.
So I wrote down the title of my literary fiction masterpiece at the top of the page: My Coffee & Cake with Andre.
During the course of the two hour write in, the atmosphere became more social and by being distracted, and not by having any ideas, I managed to write a grand total of about 400 words.
Day One: 6:00 to 10:00
When I awoke the next day, I found that I was trapped in a room and couldn’t leave (though that is what you get if you get caught while urinating on a war memorial). During this enforced captivity I was able to write another 2000 words to add to my day total.
Day One: 14:00 to 21:00
Once I had returned home to the safety and solitude of my lair I was able to add to this total. Some people may question why I continued handwriting on day one once I had access to my computer. The simple truth is this – I was on a roll. After I got off the bread I realised that it was too squashed to eat so I just wrote instead. As the day came to a close (well my day anyway) I reached a total of 3517 words which was 1850 words above where I needed to be at that point in the event.
Day Two: Eclectic Boogaloo
During my herculean handwriting effort on day one a pattern emerged. That pattern was that even if I had no ideas I could still crank out the crap. I didn’t bother typing up day one’s wordage but I did add it to my word count. I just resolved to write 50,000 words on the computer for official verification purposes and add in the hand written words to the total later.
The other revelation was that I had the startings of a plot. A not very good plot, but I plot none the less. As the title suggested there would be coffee and there would be cake. So I set my opening chapter in a dingy diner. Three characters had emerged. The Andre of the title became Colonel Andre DuBois. The second character the “My” of the title became his unnamed (at that point) assistant (An assistant that wasn't named Marty). The third was an elderly waitress. On day two the plot became more solidified and harder to flush, so I was stuck with it.
And for the first time ever on this website an extract follows in all its unedited first draft glory:
The waitress poured the coffee and turned to leave. “I’ll be back soon with your cake.” She shuffled away. I glanced down at the coffee mug. There stencilled in small neat print were the words “I love Joe” and two pictures, one on either side of the lettering. The first to the left of the text was one of the previous proprietors, one of the previous Joe’s. The photograph wasn’t very clear, but judging by the wideness of Joe’s shirt collar it must have been from the 1970s. To the right of the text was another image, an image that will haunt me until the day that I forget about it, or remember to forget about it. It was Delores the waitress. She too was dressed in high tech 1970s bright yellow fashion but the thing was she didn’t look any different than she did today. Okay, today she had the uniform on that exposed her midriff but beyond that, the image could have been taken yesterday. The Colonel was still studying the menu, so i tapped on the table to get his attention. On the third attempt I managed it. “Hmm.” He took a slurp of coffee while he waited for my reply. “Why are you late?” “I’m not late.” The Colonel put his empty cup back down on the table and gave out a quick yawn. “Anyway, you shouldn’t,” Colonel Andre DuBois yawned again, “you shouldn’t worry about this concept of time, Marty.” “But it was you who asked me to be here at eleven pm sharp.” “And were you?” The Colonel leaned forward placing his elbows on the table, his weigh pushing down his side of the table down causing the empty coffee mug to fall over due to the angle of the surface. It was luck that I had my cup in my hand or my lap would have been scalded. And not in a good way. “Yes,” I replied. “I was here on time.” “Then kudos. Kudos to you my good man.” He said. He looked around the diner as though he was struggling for something to say or had lost his train of thought. “Yes,” he continued in a subdued tone. “Kudos.” There was another brief pause. “I hate silence, don’t you?” He leaned back in to his chair, I caught his empty mug before it fell to the floor, but not without managing to spill some of my own coffee on to my hand. “Bastard!” “There is no reason to be like that, old boy. I was simply asking you a follow up question after congratulating you on your epic quest.” I sucked the spilt liquid from my skin and hoped that it wouldn’t leave a mark, or a Peter or a Luke or a John. I didn’t need some Pious symbol etched into my skin as a reminder of my haste. “Not you, the coffee.” The Colonel nodded his head but I got a sense that deep down he didn’t really believe me. He leaned forward and took both of the mugs from me and set them down on the table. The cleared up a few remaining drops of coffee on the table with a couple of napkins from the dispenser. I hadn’t seen him this domesticated before, not even in his own home. I suppose that it why he kept a dog, not so much as a pet but as a cleaning device. While in his home, he would just drop half eaten bits of food on the floor and the dog would just wonder round vacuuming them up. Apart from the smell of a confined dog and an unkempt Colonel, it was quite an impressive setup. At least it was until the dog died. The Colonel didn’t notice until about a week and a half later. Well, when I say the Colonel didn’t notice, it was me who noticed and told the Colonel. He was quite upset; until he hatched a scheme involving re-animation took up most of his time over the next several weeks. It was quite an ingenious scheme really when viewed from a high level but once one got down to the nuts and bolts, the fine detail if you will, it turned out that it was in violation of many international copyright claims. For Andre’s idea stemmed from getting cheap animation cells and then stringing them together to create cheap cartoon that he could then sell on to children’s TV stations for a quick profit. Sadly, his first effort was little more than silent stick men (what can I say, I can’t draw, or write dialogue, but you’ve figured that out already, if you are still reading) and when there was no interest amongst the Television or Radio community, Andre stepped up his efforts by screen capping popular Disney films and dubbing in his own dialogue over the top. This attracted some of the Disney top brass. I can tell you from personal experience that Lumiere from Beauty and the Beast can be one tough bastard when he wants to be, don’t let that singing candle shtick fool you, he can really burn you with that wax. Some of the human employees got in on the frivolous lawsuit act too, though they weren’t as humorous as they were mainly lawyers and such, except for that one guy who we can name pending the outcome of a lawsuit that we are also certain to go to trial for, as frivolous without merit was not how the judge saw it or described it. And I was wrong to setup a fake account on twitter for him to indicate this fact. I wonder if this counts as a written apology. Perhaps it does if I can deign to run a spell check. This act of re-animation was also, strangely, seen by some in certain quarters as a war crime, though the dimes and nickels abstained from voicing their own thoughts. I was never convinced of the validity of that last claim, but may be it was just because Andre DuBois called himself “The Colonel.” Oh yes, Andre DuBois was like Elvis’ manager in the fact that he held no military rank what-so-ever but did on occasion like to wear a ten gallon hat, but Andre DuBois favoured a foam one rather than more traditional materials that one tends to associate with cowboys and their hats. Colonel Andre DuBois looked at me as though I had just gone on a several hundred word rant about something that isn’t really relevant. As I focused my glassy stare upon his features, I had to consider if he was right or not. “Are you okay?”
Organised Boogaloo: Days Three Through Five
The writing continued like this up until the close of Day five when I ended the first chapter as the Colonel's Assistant stormed out of the diner and made his way home. As a creative style I had grown bored writing in the first person, so beginning with Chapter 2, the first couple of hunfdred words of which I wrote at the end of day 5, I switched to third person.
After 5 days of high velocity novelling I had written 9509 words.
