art of noise getting louder

I'm back. Today is a nice day, because it's the first day in a month where I haven't had to write a minimum of 1,700 words. Nanowrimo is finished, thank god, and I can at last do simple things like watch a film, have a pint, listen to records, surf the internet, without feeling profoundly guilty and like I'm letting myself down in some pathetic way. That said, it's a bit early to say whether or not a month of furious scribbling has (a) got me into the habit of writing regularly, or (b) completely burned me out. Hopefully the former, which would indicate that I should be back to blogging a respectable amount again in the run up to Christmas.

In the meantime, some good stuff to keep you going.

The Art of Noise blog is looking better and better, with Jonathan from Crinklybee and Phil from Danger! High Postage! joining myself and Ben in contributing regular music posts. Our A-Z feature has proven even more successful, with a whole bunch of us taking on a different letter of the alphabet each week and offering a variety of music-related contributions. Catch up by following the following links to see what we said:

To start with, A (where I discussed the XTC album Apple Venus Vol. 1 and others dealt with Adam & The Ants, the Alabama 3, amplification, the songwriting partnership that is Anderson/Butler, Asian Dub Foundation, The Auteurs, and Jez's rather open opinion on anyone...)

The Letter B (where I took a sabattical, and others took on Backini, bass guitars, the colour black, the Blackpool Empress Ballroom, the Bluetones, bootleg t-shirts and that perennial of pop, the broken heart).

and finally, C (where I discussed Clap Your Hands Say Yeah alongside posts on Camber Sands, Casablanca Records, the compilation It's a Cool, Cool Christmas, fellow Brighton boys Clearlake, the Radiohead song 'Climbing Up The Walls', the ghastly Coldplay, the Concretes, and crowdsurfing).

D next week, obviously. Ben has put out a fatwa on Dido entries, which is a pity.

nanowrimo

A quick note on the lack of updates; sorry all, there is a reason: I'm trying to do this nanowrimo novel-in-a-month thing at the moment and the fall-out is that I've not really got time to keep (a) blogging, (b) drinking to excess and (c) writing a novel. One of them had to go. That said, I will try to get a couple of posts up this week: I'm already overdue one for the Art of Noise blog.

In the meantime, writing a novel in 30 days is hard. I've done just over 21,000 words in 22 days, which means I have an almost impossible task ahead of me, but there you go. I need to write 3624 words a day, I think. God. So far I've managed an average of only 955 words a day, which is completely pathetic when you consider that this post already consists, at this point of 150. Ah well. I'm still hopeful!

oh for more time

Am weighing up the pros and cons of attempting Nanowrimo again - it's due to begin tomorrow. Um. Nanowrimo, in case you've not heard of it, stands for National Novel Writing Month, the principle being that we all know that we'll never get round to writing a novel, but we all want to do it, just the same. Nanowrimo requires you to give up 30 days of your life and force yourself to write a 50,000 word novel in that time.

Which means knuckling down and forcing yourself to write - being short on time makes you short of inhibitions, short of the normal impulse to go back and chop and change and frustrate yourself with the intricacies of plot. This way the only way to write it is to write it, as fast as you can and as free as you can. You mightn't end up with something worthy of the Whitbread Prize, but face it, you'll never write a novel any other way.

All this and more I told myself this time last year (in fact, I even told you, too), but... well, it's no surprise that Nanowrimo didn't work out for me last November. I wrote about 11,000 words, I think, in the end - which is pretty credible but not good enough when you need to be writing around 1,700 words a day.

So I'm tempted to try again as of tomorrow. I have a laptop now, so it should be easier to do. On the other hand, if I say I'm going to do it, I surely won't. So I might.

Apologies in advance if I post a 50,000 word novel to the blog in a month's time :-)

motivation

Nanowrimo encourages people to do something that, without a bit of encouragement, they would never get round to doing. Namely, write a novel. Knowing that we all have an epic lurking unwritten somewhere beneath the service, the group (NaNoWriMo is an abbreviation of National Novel Writing Month) preaches a strict doctrine. In their words,

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over talent and craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

Speaking as someone who has tried on several occasions to write a novel but inevitably been sidetracked by beer, work, books and the kind of ambitiousness which leads you down blind alleys of endless tweaking and re-writing, I think this is a really refreshing idea. It gives you that bit more freedom to not worry about consistency or accuracy and instead concentrate on getting something written. One can always go back and edit later, after all.

When the challenge was first run in 1999 only six writers limped past the finishing line. Last year 3500 managed it, so it's clearly not impossible. Most appealingly, it imposes a kind of disclipline on the writer, something that most people I know, now in their mid twenties and five years having passed since they wrote their dissertations or revised for exams, have not experienced in a long time. And may not want to again, granted. But it's only a month, and it's a great idea. And maybe we need to be made to do it, after all this prevarication.

The site boasts a suppportive forum with plenty of support and encouragement, and participants arrange local meet-ups to discuss their progress. There's even a section where you can take your ailing story to a 'plot-doctor' who'll get you back on the straight and narrow.

It has, too, I guess, enormous potential for bloggers, if one is not already tired of the concept of a 'blog-novel'. Yes, Plain Layne, I'm looking at you.

Well, perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned it, as now it looks like I'm promising to do it. If I never mention it again (or worse, never mention it again after blogging enthusiastically for the first couple of days in November) just now that I tried, really I did, I tried.

Registration starts on October 1. Let's do it.