Sharp Words

As mentioned several times already in the past month or so, November is National Novel Writing Month.

This will be my seventh year taking part, and hopefully, my fifth time reaching 50,000 words in 30 days. Actually, this year I’m aiming for 75-80 thousand, since I managed 70,000 last year.

I’m extremely excited about it this year. I have a fun story idea to work on; I need to reach 50k on that, and then I can write some of my long-standing in-need-of-rewrite fantasy saga. Or rather, I’ve promised myself for every thousand words of fantasy saga that I write, I can write two thousand of my silly sci-fi. I need to reach 50,000 on a single project to properly fulfill the rules of NaNoWriMo, so that will be on my fun project. But this way, the other one gets a word count boost too.

One of the reasons I’m so excited is that for yet another year, I’m the Municipal Liaison (aka regional co-ordinator) for Northern Ireland. I’ve run a series of “Introduction to NaNoWriMo” sessions this year, both online in our chat room and face-to-face, and so far I’ve talked to 17 other WriMos – which is almost as many as I met during the whole of November last year.

Plus, we have a kick-ass kick-off party lined up for Friday, with a happy number of RSVPs – and even if they don’t all show, we’ll still have plenty of people and a good time. (And lo! the Pumpkin of Sugary Doom shall inflict destruction on all…)

And I can’t wait to get started actually writing on Sunday…

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One of my local pound shops (which no longer sells everything at a pound, but has things priced at £1.50 and £2 as well) has lately renamed itself.

I can’t actually remember the old name, but I think it might have had ‘pound’ in it. I could be wrong.

The new name, however, is SOME CHOICE.

And I smile every time I see it. I also get the urge to ask to talk to management and explain that they have quite a lot of choice, actually, and there really isn’t any need to be so self-deprecating.

I’m not sure if it makes it worse that the slogan on some of the stuff inside is ‘Some Choice, Some Value’….

And just because I don’t want to miss another one, here’s my Friday Flash 55, inspired loosely by a recent visit to a local fried chicken takeaway chain, as well as by the above.

“Chicken fillet burger please.”

“What do you want on it?”

“Coleslaw.”

“Sorry, no coleslaw.”

“Tomato and mayonnaise then?”

“We’re out of tomatoes.”

“OK, just mayo.”

“No problem! Oh. The tub’s empty. Let me check the fridge… No, none there.”

“What can I have then?”

“Ketchup.”

“Or?”

“Just ketchup.”

“Some choice! I’ll just have it plain.”

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I love buying notebooks. I buy them even when I don’t need them.

The photo shows the notebooks I found in my study. (Which admittedly is a large room, and I don’t think there are too many other notebooks lying around the house; maybe just 3 or 4.) As you can see, I like my notebooks to be hardbacked, or spiral-bound, or preferably both…

Out of the 12 there, 3 have never been used, and another 3 are currently blank because I ripped out the old unwanted scribbles that they had. (I didn’t lose anything meaningful – just Italian vocabulary lists, a few pages of holiday spending, and some old work notes.)

All the ones that have been used have some sort of history. Even the ones that haven’t have something about them. That grey, blue and red striped one in the middle? Bought in Asda for £1 the other week just because I liked the look of it. No idea what I’ll use it for.

The little black one with the inset picture on the cover was a present from a friend 10 years ago, and never used because I couldn’t think of anything worthy enough to put in it.

That little blue plastic-covered one at the front was lost for a long time. When I found it in a box earlier this year, I was delighted to find some ‘lost’ poems in it, written about 7 or 8 years ago.

The brown striped one at the back has brown paper pages which look beautiful but don’t soak up fountain pen ink very well. I persevere though, because that’s my ‘official’ poetry notebook, and I like writing in proper ink with a proper nib.

The purple one with the elastic band and the NaNoWriMo stickers? Well, you can probably guess what that one’s been used for. It’s been my writing and note-taking notebook for a couple of years of NaNoWriMo, but since it’s mostly full, it’s been retired this year in favour of the mostly-white-and-flowery book over on the left.

The little blue one with a dandelion is my log of stuff (food, weight, to-do lists). It’s a journal of sorts, and I think that’s actually where my obsession comes from – the 8 years that I kept a journal, always in a hardback notebook of varying size (I think I got through about 6).

I like notebooks much too much. (And if anyone is ever stuck for an idea for a present for me…)

Anyone else have more notebooks (or pens or other writing paraphenalia) than they really need?

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This November, I’m trying to get people to pay me to write.

Alas, the money won’t be for myself. I’m seeking sponsorship this year for my NaNoWriMo endeavours: 50,000 words (or more; I’m hoping for 70,000 like last year) in just 30 days.

What, you ask? National Novel Writing Month? Why do you want to be sponsored for that?

Well, NaNoWriMo – or more properly, its parent organisation, the Office of Letters and Light – is a nonprofit organisation which provides free resources not just to those adults taking part in NaNoWriMo and Script Frenzy, but also for the hundreds of schools which take part in the Young Writers’ Program. And I’m sure we can all agree that getting kids to write can only be a good thing!

Have a look at the NaNoWriMo ‘Where Your Donations Go‘ page to find out more.

Every I donate some of my own money to support NaNoWriMo – and all participants are encouraged to do the same, although sadly less than 10% do so. I also give my time as a Municipal Liaison (aka regional co-ordinator) – come to think of it, that costs me money to.

But this year I thought I’d give myself an additional NaNoWriMo challenge of getting ther people to contribute too. So, I’ve got myself a nice little official GiftTool page and am accepting sponsors (I’ve had my first one already, thanks Ken)!

Unfortunately, sponsoring me directly through the page can only be done by credit card and in specified dollar amounts. (And I ultimately have to submit all my gathered amounts as dollars too.)  However, you can also sponsor me directly in cash (pounds sterling) or via Paypal (currency of your choice) – any money coming that way is counted as a pending pledge until I pay it through, but it still registers against my total.

Please do sponsor me. Thanks.

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I’ve been watching Susan and Hope for a while as they’ve been doing Mr. Knowitall’s Friday Flash 55 – a flash fiction story in just 55 words .

Susan tweeted yesterday that she was stuck for this week’s, so I tossed her a prompt of ‘gerbils’… and then decided to use it myself.

“You’re sure they’re both girls?”
“Definitely. £30 please.”

The cage was set up in the playroom.

“Clean the gerbils out before you watch TV. You wanted them, remember?”
“But they’re booooooring.”
“Doesn’t matter. You promised to look after them.”

The gerbils became more interesting the morning we came downstairs to find two had become eight.

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It’s National Poetry Day, so what better excuse to post one of my recent poems?

And if anyone wants to comment with a theme I can use for a poem to be written today, please do!

Baby Birds

My fledgling aspirations tumble from their nest.
Woven of words and wordless longing,
lined with hopeful fluff,
it can shelter them no more.
They are pushed out into the wide-open spaces
and left to fend for themselves.

Cruel nature takes them one by one.
They succumb to the cat’s pounce of jealousy,
to the bleak cold of apathy,
to neglect and self-derision and a lack of confidence.

Found years later,
a lone feather reminds me of what might have been,
of the beautiful things that might have flown free
if only I’d learnt to nurture my dreams.

© 2009 C Sharp

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