grahambinns.com

A quick update, for I have to actually leave the house to do things today (a rare occurrence at the moment, I tell you), but I thought that a few people who read this might appreciate it.

As an ex-NaNoWriMo participant I received an email from Chris Baty, its organiser, telling me about Script Frenzy, which is (as far as I can gather) NaNoWriMo for scriptwriters (film and stage alike).

Snip from the email:

... Script Frenzy---in which first-time scriptwriters and old pros get together to write feature-length movies and plays in June---has launched.

Like NaNoWriMo, it's free to participate. And also like NaNoWriMo, we're going to spend a great, hilarious month pushing our creative limits, getting in over our heads, and churning out pages of brilliance and embarrassing drivel. In Script Frenzy, you can even write with a partner!

Script Frenzy can be found at www.scriptfrenzy.org .

252 / 333 (75.7%)

Just eighty-one pages to go. Well, probably. I can't remember whether or not, somewhere in those eighty-one pages, I've written a message in caps to myself, telling me that I need to fill a bit in. In fact, I've just come across one such note at the end of page 252, which tells me that I need to connect the chapter it concludes with the beginning of the chapter following it; considering that they take place four hundred-odd miles apart and contain the same characters, that's quite an important bit that I need to write. One for Nero again, I think. I still get the distinct feeling that I'm going about this all ass-backwards (as an aside, I've recently discovered yet another thing to love about the Python programming language: mod_python, one of several ways of integrating Python with your Apache server, has an option in one of its Request class called assbackwards. Just thought you should know). Ordinarily you'd expect to write a novel, make sure it told the story that you wanted it to tell, and then go back and fix the actual words. In this case I've fixed the words and found that I need to rearrange the story (for example I've found that some pretty cool bad guys were essentially wasted on this novel; they'd be much better elsewhere and as such will be excised from the plot). I'd like to think that this is all because this is a first novel, planned very little in a very short space of time with an 'if I don't do it now I never will' mentality (largely an accurate one, I feel) and written mostly in a rush in November 2005. I'm not trying to blame NaNo - on the contrary I'm grateful for the kick up the arse it gave me - but I think perhaps it wasn't the best way to approach a full novel because it's left a lot of things needing to be fixed. No matter, fixed shall these things be. And novel the second will be better planned out from the start, I think.

NaNoWriMo 2006 registration starts tomorrow. Don't forget.

Funny things, blogs. You can set one up without too much thought (I'm living proof of this, by the way) and happily pootle along, filling it with all kinds of foufouraw about your life, your aspirations and your thoughts, and never really think about what you're writing.

And then, one day, your workmates (hello fellas) discover your blog, either through your own injudiciousness or, quite possibly, through your vanity, and you suddenly feel tongue tied where once you were verbose.

Well, that's what happened to me anyway. So I must apologise for my brief absence from the blogosphere. Once I get used to the idea that writing something here may precipitate questions in the workplace I'm sure I'll be back to my usual gross excess of verbiage.

Aside from that, though, this is but a head-above-the-parapet post, so I won't keep a-waffling. I've got a story to finish, and as one colleague, who shall be nameless, pointed out, blogging about writing is perhaps the most perversely ironic form of procrastination possible. Except for blogging about blogging about writing, of course.

NaNoWriMo starts in less than two months. Just a thought...

Writing is far easier when you don't have to think about how to start.

It's true, it's true. For the past three nights I've sat at my desk and stared first at the computer screen, then at some blank A4, then at one notepad, then at the A4 again. Finally, I've stared at my little Moleskine notepad and then given up and played around on t'interweb, which is much, much easier.

And yet at some point in the not all that distant but rapidly receding past, I managed to write a 100,000 word (or thereabouts) novel manuscript (which is also going ignored. Shh, let me finish my chain of thought before starting on a new one). The funny thing about that was that I started it without any real expectations in mind, having a deadline - 50,000 words in 30 days - and a very vague plot to start with. On the first night I wrote over 1,000 words. I haven't written that more than a handful of times since April.

Writing is easier when you don't have to start a story because you're already committed to the piece you decide to work on, whether by a large amount or a small one. It doesn't matter if you've only written a few paragraphs and then put it to one side. If you can pick those paragraphs up and add some more then you're doing your job. Eventually you get a whole story, one word at a time.

But beginnings are hard. This one is particularly hard, because I can't see where the beginning begins.

I'll let you know.