NaNoWriMo - Before The Start

This week, then, I'm going to attempt something stupid and pointless. Well, more so than any other week, in any case. As November begins to kick in, and the nights get darker and colder, I find, for about the first time this year, less things to occupy my time than at any other point in the last twelve months. Of course, now that we all live in the future, and that, there are various things to conquer and destroy any feelings of boredom I may have been considering having. There is, of course, the whole growing a moustache thing for a month, which isn't so much a boredom-thrashing activity (you'd have to be pretty damn bored, wouldn't you?) but a charity awareness thing, which I'll be coming back to later in the week. 

I'm holding some improv workshops, the first of which is tonight (Sunday 28th). I'm a bit nervous that nobody's going to turn up, if I'm honest. Facebook has long ago ceased being a reliable indicator of how many people are actually going to turn up to your event. I have had a few people saying that they'll be there, and I think it will be the sort of thing that simply needs to be going for a few weeks before it catches fire. Not literally, I hope. 

But none of this is the stupid and pointless thing. Every November, thousands of people around the world attempt something called NaNoWriMo. In case you're not already familiar with the concept, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. The aim is to do - to achieve - exactly what that name suggests: to hack out a novel in 30 days. The novel is a reasonably short one - the suggested aim for a word count is 50,000, which is - very roughly - the size of The HitchHikers Guide To The Galaxy, for instance, or Of Mice And Men. The real aim behind the whole enterprise is to get those people who are constantly telling themselves that one day they'll actually get around to writing a book .. to actually get around to writing a book. It doesn't even really matter about the quality, just getting the word count down. It averages out at about 1,500 words a day. This, I figure, should be just about manageable,even if we include the inevitable couple of days throughout the month where I only produce 500 words, or don't even get around to writing anything at all.

I'm deliberately only starting on November 1st, which is Thursday. Obviously, I could try and get a head start by starting now, but somehow it doesn't seem in the spirit of the whole adventure. I rather like the idea of starting this fool's errand at the same time as thousands of others all across the planet. I haven't even made any planning notes.

What I do have is a title and a vague plot line. A couple of years ago, a local publishing company was asking for submissions to an imprint they had, called Pulp Press. The stories they wanted were exactly that - pulp fiction, the sort of grimy 5 cent paperbacks you might have had in your back pocket in the 1940s or 50s. When men were bastards and women all wore Bettie Page bangs. Sex, violence and six inch heels. Needless to say, it's not exactly the sort of writing I normally do, but nonetheless, an idea did present itself. I was doing some stand up at the time (more than I do these days,anyway), and the stand up scene in Brighton, where I live, is sometimes quite insular. I began to have these ideas about various comics on the scene being bumped off in Brighton (it may have even been inspired by the old line about 'dying on stage'). However, as with many projects, I never actually got round to writing it, particularly as - even though I roughly knew who was going to die, and how (the last two deaths have been fairly fixed in my head now for the past two years), I've never really been able to work out why these deaths are occurring. Not being able to work out the reason for the catalyst has stopped me starting. Now, however: I'm going to put faith in the expectation that if I write enough of the story, a solution will eventually present itself. And even if it doesn't, it didn't stop other classic pulp writers. I think it was someone like Raymond Chandler - he'd finished The High Window, or maybe even The Maltease Falcon, which starts with a body being discovered. It's that death that's the catalyst for the entire story. But when the story ends, the murderer isn't revealed. It's the ultimate Macguffin. When asked by a fan what the deal was with the dead body, Chandler reportedly repiled: 'Oh, him. I forgot about him .. '

So, hopefully, as long as I can get a fairly entertaining story down, then logic can go hang. For the first draft, anyway. The story is going to be called Set Up, Punch by the way. I'll try to post a daily report on how it's all going, with a wordcount. Obviously, at the moment, the wordcount is exactly zero. I'm hoping it won't stay that way ..