NaNoWiMo has begun. It’s funny that this, the first year I have finally actually sat down and begun writing a NaNo (despite planning to for the last 3 years), the story I planned right up to the start is now almost mostly out of the window. The central idea is still there, but the style and events have changed completely. It all started when I woke up and heard the raining pouring outside…

It also doesn’t help that last night was Hallowe’en, spent watching scary movies, and we’d also gone on a ghost walk in Edinburgh last weekend. Plus, I’ve just begun reading a book about the haunted Greyfriars graveyard in Edinburgh. No wonder everything has gone topsy turvy.

NaNoWiMo is just what I need right now. I’ve been trying to get over the stopping point that’s kept me from starting writing again for so long – recent posts on the topic of creativity by Merlin Mann have helped, certainly, but NaNo is right up there as a major impetus to get things rolling again. So, hooray NaNo!

Day 1’s writing is now down, with over 2100 words (an average of 1667 a day is needed throughout November to hit the 50,000 word target), I thing it’s a good start. Huzzah.

I dreamt of this city, growing up, while watching BBC comedy and dramas on the ABC in Australia, and any other channel that would show them. I’d sign-up for an International Penfriends account specifically to get UK penpals (and specifically requested no USA ones; I kick myself now that I have a near-bordering-obsession with Americana).

I thought of London the way I thought of my hometown, Ipswich – as the town everything happened in. We had a small cinema which had old-style balconys; I figured that’s where the Queen – and the two old geezers from The Muppets – sat when they came to the pictures. When I would watch shows like _Open All Hours_, I assumed it was shot somewhere in London (it wasn’t; it was shot in Doncaster, way oop north).

I used to read a British BMX magazine, and British kid comics (Buster, Whizzer & Chips) just to get a sense of British life. When the first Gulf War broke out, I was glued to the TV not for the coverage, but because one of the channels in Australia would simply rebroadcast the BBC news every day for cheap coverage, and it always offered a glimpse of London life: delayed tubes, bus problems, and the like.

I first came here early 2000 for a brief work trip. I remember catching the tube from Heathrow, looking out over far-west London (then West London proper – Acton, etc) being a little disappointed but also excited when the first pale-faced, gaunt working class lad got on the train and slouched on a seat. _Just like they look on the telly!_

London was clean, dirty, old, new, classic, stylish, styleless, and full of people who didn’t seem to realise that they lived in LONDON.

My work colleague I spent the most time with here at first was Scottish, and somewhat dismissive of the city; she liked taking her scooter out for little jaunts through the small city streets, but I don’t think she ever enjoyed the London-ness of it. I loved it. I walked along the Thames, seeing Barnes across the water, from Chiswick to Hammersmith Bridge and thinking I could do that everyday.

By the time I went home two weeks later, I was really hoping I’d get a work permit to return properly. That didn’t pan out.

Time rolls on. Two years later, I had met and fallen in love with, and was now marrying, a Londoner. She was equally dismissive and head-over-heels with London. She introduced me to the shitty, dirty, crime-ridden aspects of living in London; and to the exciting, bouncy, anarchically joyful side.

That was about seven and a half years ago. I get jaded about London as well, now. I can walk past Big Ben in his clock tower without much of a glance other than to see the time. I look at the river as simply part of the view; the city skyline as something that surrounds the Gherkin. I hate the buses, the tube, the crowds, Oxford Street on a Saturday afternoon. But I am also equally defensive of it. There are aspects of living here that you miss when you’re just visiting, unless you’ve had the same bloke give you three different sob stories in hope for some change on three successive nights; of sitting on the upper deck of a night bus while an argument rages beneath you, and the driver switches everything off and tells us to change buses, and its 4am and we just want to go home.

It’s like any city; skin deep isn’t deep enough. Sometimes it’s too deep.

But, in the end, London is my home, for better or worse.

November 1 is the first day of the annual NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) challenge; although it is certainly an International effort now, and has been since almost day 1.

For the last few years – ever since I first heard of NaNo infact – I have been telling myself I’d do this. And, me being me, I never did. I think one year I may have started a novel, but from Day 2 onwards nothing happened.

Anyway, I’m determined this year. I have the story idea – actually something I began penning out a little while ago – and it’s a good one, I think. I won’t go into detail on what’s involved in the storyline specifically, but the basics are: it’s set in London, weird shit is happening around the main character while all he wants to do is fall in love. By ‘weird shit’ I mean intensely weird shit, but we’ll get to that once it’s done.

I’ve been reading a lot of what Merlin Mann has been posting lately while he works on his book Inbox Zero which, despite the title, is – I believe – mainly about just forcing yourself into being creative or doing whatever it is you’ve always wanted to do but keep coming up with excuses to not do.

Think about something you’ve been really excited to make or do. Maybe something you’ve been thinking about starting for weeks, months, or even years. Dance lessons? Short story? Web comic? MAME cabinet? Tree house? Doomsday laser? Excel spreadsheet? What stops you?

Remember now, we’re not talking about finishing a project or even making something that you know will be the greatest thing ever made. Just starting. What’s the barrier for you?

So what has the barrier been for me?

I think mostly just the thought of wanting to do it properly – not being prepared to do a shitty first draft – and also basically laziness. Or, rather, I have preferred to come up with a multitude of ideas rather than concentrate on doing one of them (well or badly).

Come November 1, I hope to stop that; I will sit down that night and just start hammering out the beginning of my story and each night, I will sit down again and continue on where I left off. And by the end of November, even if I don’t have a completed novel, I will have 50,000 words of something.

Another inspirational, writing-related link: How To Write With Style by Vonnegut.

1. Find a subject you care about

Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.

I am not urging you to write a novel, by the way — although I would not be sorry if you wrote one, provided you genuinely cared about something. A petition to the mayor about a pothole in front of your house or a love letter to the girl next door will do.

2. Do not ramble, though

I won’t ramble on about that.

As I prepare for this year’s NaNoWriMo, this page provides some inspiration on how to get into the habit of writing beforehand.

Free writing (also stream-of-consciousness writing) is a writing technique in which a person writes continuously for a set period of time without regard to spelling, grammar, or topic. It produces raw, often unusable material, but helps writers overcome blocks of apathy and self-criticism. It is used mainly by prose writers and writing teachers. Some writers use the technique to collect initial thoughts and ideas on a topic, often as a preliminary to formal writing.

I think it was our cousins, and our Uncle Terry, who showed us the way. It may have even been after a football game across the river, but I shouldn’t think so. Either way, one night ended with us climbing the maintenance stairs under the East Street bridge, which spanned the Bremer River in Ipswich, the town I grew up in. Running the full length of the underside of the bridge were catwalks used by maintenance crews to, well, maintain the bridge. And on the metal struts and cross beams under the bridge was a blanket of the most fascinating, most obscene graffiti I think I’d ever seen. I was about 11 or so, and this was – quite simply – amazing.

There were jokes, there were limericks, there were baudy invitations to call certain people for a good time (or, simply, to have their dick sucked). This was eye-opening, to be sure. We spent a good hour or two roaming back and forth, with the sounds of traffic crossing the bridge over our heads, and the gentle lapping of the dirty river water beneath us.

We went there, just us kids, once again after that but it didn’t have quite the same magic. It was daylight for one thing, and we were also spotted by someone if I recall – another group of kids, I think – so some of the excitement was taken away; it wasn’t secret anymore.

Soon after, the catwalks were closed off, and we couldn’t get back up there anymore. I like to think the graffiti is still there, 25-odd years later.

I would go to prison in the Philippines just to join this dance troup.

Really digging Merlin Mann’s new Tumblr for his upcoming book.

Naming cows isn’t udder nonsense – USATODAY.com.

Cows that are given names produce more milk than those that are not, says a new study out of England.

This is brilliant! (And this study won one of this year’s Ig Nobel Prizes).