As many of you will know, it's NaNoWriMo in a few days time. For those of you who don't know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month - a phenomenon that started in America in the late 90s, by a guy called Chris Baty and a few of his friends, and has spread across the world like wildfire since then.
I discovered NaNoWriMo in early 2010 because of a girl in my english language class. I didn't end up keeping in touch with Charlotte and I regret that deeply but at the same time, she's led me to meet so many other people that I'm almost glad I didn't know anyone else doing it when I started. Because I didn't know anyone, I got to know people on the forums and started going to the in-person meet-ups in cafes and things last year.
It was also the year I found out that we didn't have a Municipal Liaison.
Now MLs aren't essential. They're handy for organising things and getting people together as well as creating goodies and incentives for the Wrimos to reward their hard work but largely their job can be done by the Wrimos themselves. They don't get paid and the only real reward is a tonne of extra work, occasional angry rants from writers and a load of fretting over whether everything is going to turn out fine with their Wrimos and the 50,000 words they're churning out on top of their real lives.
Now up until last year, I'd never 'won' NaNo. And by won I mean I'd never hit the 50k word count in the 30 days of November. Last year, however, I decided it was time. Come hell or high water I was going to hit that ambitious target and thus earn a purple banner under my avatar and the ability to legitimately buy a winner's t-shirt in the beginning of December.
And I did it. Just.
I succeeded and over shot the 50k by 506 words. Happy just isn't what I would use to describe that feeling. When I hit 50,506 on the evening of November 30th, it felt curiously like the world had ended and started all at the same time. I'd finished that one thing that I'd been striving to do. It was all over. I had achieved my goal and had no where to go and nothing to do afterwards. But at the same time there were so many new opportunities. I still needed to write the actual ending - I may have hit my targets and deadlines but I was still a few chapters short of the final scenes. I needed to edit - oh boy did I need to edit that baby. With plot holes that could engulf small nations, there was some serious explaining and patching up to do. I finished my baby and started editing in May - I was just too devastated by the fact that NaNo was over that I couldn't pick it back up. That and the time flew by so quickly that I barely even realised that we were in 2013! I finished writing and editing in June - I didn't edit much, it's still my raw, raw NaNo baby, but I put away the document and haven't opened it again since. I will, for sure, finish editing and get a copy printed - for myself if nothing else - but for now, it's resting. We're getting some separation so that I can look over it objectively.
In the summer the ML applications opened.
One of my major driving forces for finishing NaNo last year was so that I could apply to be an ML. Even if my application was rejected, I still wanted to try. I knew that I could bring a better, more communal, more involving NaNo to Newcastle and Durham and I wanted to give it a shot. I filled in the application, sent it off and waited. And waited. And waited.
It went on and on until finally, when I was out shopping, I got an email saying that my application had been successful and to look out for other important emails in the weeks to follow.
So far I've had a massive number of really, really helpful emails as well as buckets of encouragement. Over the last few days, I've been writing packs and booklets for my region of Wrimos by hand and on the PC to put together little (hopefully) helpful writing kits to kickstart word counts and battle the dreaded writers block. I tied up the first half of the NaNo packs with string and a sticker and handed them out today - I think they were gratefully received by most. I think they're pretty cool to be honest and there's the promise of foamy dinosaur stickers when people hit word count targets and slay the procrastination dragon and banish the writer's block bats.
Our haunts are mostly going to be the Settle Down Cafe and Bar Loco this year, with the possibility of Clayton Street Caffe Nero on Saturday afternoons. The food at both the Settle Down and Bar Loco is amazing and who can fault a good hot caffeinated beverage to get the creative juices flowing?
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