So I decided, reasonably late in the day, to commit to this year’s NanoWrimo. In case you don’t know, the basic concept of NanoWriMo is that would be writers commit to writing 50,000 words over the course of one month. Despite it being National Novel Writing Month, one doesn’t actually have to write a novel – it can be a screenplay, or collection of short stories – whatever. It’s really a tool for procrastinators (of which writers make up a maddeningly large percentage) to actually get on with writing the words, rather than let yet another year slip by and realise that they have – once again – not actually managed to get around to writing that prize-winning book yet. I’m pretty decent at getting stuff finished, but I’m better with a deadline or with someone else waiting on a manuscript. If I’m writing for myself, I will on occasion let things slip by. So something like NanoWriMo is very helpful.
Particularly as I’m going to use NanoWriMo this year to (attempt to) finish off a significant number of short stories that have almost – but not completely – been finished over the last few years. The stories themselves are pretty sound, they just need at best a final draft, or at worst the actual endings (the place, of course, where many would be writers who aren’t actually writers fall down). It is, unarguably, a form of discipline, of getting the thing done, even past the point when it theoretically stops being fun. I’ve now had a couple of short stories published (in actual collections and everything), and have been approached for more, and as you might imagine, that does a great deal to get me past most degrees of impostor syndrome. I mean, generally, I like what I like – but then so do a lot of writers, and it’s possible that some writers have a .. uh, inflated opinion of their own talents. I have certainly written (and submitted, in fact) stuff that I’ve winced at. I probably need to be clear on this. It’s not that I think what I’ve written is actually bad (although that might be the word I use), it’s just that I think the way I’m telling that part of the story is clumsy or forced, or that I’m working heavily against the wordcount. It’s not precisely that I’m being hard on myself, it’s just that (even after a third, or fourth, or fifth draft), I’m aware that a particular scene isn’t doing the job I need it to. I’m largely of the opinion (at least I am at the moment) that each scene in your story – whether it’s a novel, a play, a film, whatever, should be doing more than one thing at once, so that it can justify reveals and developments later. And indeed whatever it does, on multiple levels, should be buried deep enough so that your audience does not pick up on it.
So anyway, it’s – so far – fairly fun to revisit these incomplete short stories with some kind of (however contrived) deadline hanging over my head. If at the very least it means I have enough complete stories to bundle together in some kind of Kindle collection, it will mean that my time has been put to good use. Currently, according to my NanoWriMo profile, I have so far completed 3596 words, suggesting that I’m ahead of schedule, expected to finish my the 28th November. I’m entirely confident that this streak will not last: there will surely be a few days in which I won’t have time to write, and in addition, I have two other projects to complete this month, which for some inexplicable reason, I am not including in my word-count.
This week, for the first time I saw The Terminator, which is as well made as everyone says it is. Michael Biehn doesn’t get enough credit in what’s essentially a thankless role in which he has to sell an essentially ridiculous to both Linda Hamilton and us in a remarkably short time. I’m also in the middle of binging on Smallville, which I’d watched on and off on initial transmission, but must have stopped watching around season 5 (currently, I’m coming in on the end of season 2). Watched season 2 of Motherland, which is glorious, and have started re-watching W1A. In the middle of reading The Shock Doctrine, which I’ve tried reading several times before, but often found exhasutingly depressing.
OK, if you’ve managed to read this far down the blog entry, I thank you for your focus and attention. This is the bit where you can leave early to beat the traffic, because it’s where I mention my ko-fi page, which is a way that I can encourage kind visitors, via the safe medium of paypal, to throw me the price of a coffee (or indeed more), to enable me to continue making work. There’s a lot more to be said about that sort of thing (because the understandable response will often be: ‘no, get a job that pays more’), but I suspect we’re moving increasingly – for better or worse – into an era where this sort of thing – financing by crowdfunding – is considered more the norm, especially when funding and grants are more often the stuff of legend.
This is Andrew Allen 