November’s Pictonaut Challenge

So November is upon us. I’ve never been entirely sure about the month of November. It’s a distinctly unremarkable month as months go. There’s no major festivals or celebrations. Sure there’s Bonfire night, which has fireworks and we all love fireworks I’m sure. But at the end of the day that, unlike July the 4th or Bastille day, isn’t about throwing off [perceived] shackles of oppression and embracing the glories of freedom. It’s essentially a celebration of one man’s complete and resounding failure to achieve just that. It is a testament and historical memorial to shoddy workmanship, poor planning and the inability of some people to just keep their mouths shut. My friend Mick goes as far to swear November to be a foul and cursed month, frequently espousing declarations of “nothing good happens in November.” But we get fireworks, large fires and jacket tetties wrapped in tin-foil and baked in the untempered fury of a ten foot high pile of blazing wood, so at the end of the day who gives a shit, we’re all happy. Except Guy Fawkes of course, damn he got a right going over.

So musings on the nature of the November beast aside, there are a few things happening this month which are worthy of note.

Firstly it’s a new month and that means more Pictonaut based shenanigans, and I’m sure we all love shenanigans. After all it comes second only to high-jinks, having piped tom-foolery to the post in the last furlong. I was originally unsure as to whether or not to do Pictonauts this month, what with all this NaNoWriMo business going on. But NaNoWriMo is a big commitment and I doubt everyone will be doing it, people are busy, perhaps they’re looking for a slightly less intense writing commitment for the month. I also concluded that missing what would only be the 3rd month of Pictonauts would be a bit silly. Especially when Mister Andrew of the Blair went and plugged this blog to a bunch of cheery Edinburgian writers. Even despite the drain the great write-a-thon will inevitably be I’m still going to churn out a wordascope for November. I’m not going to do it on top of the big 50k, that’d be mad, instead I’m going to shamelessly shoe-horn it into the big 50k. It is after all a whole 1000 or so words where I don’t need to worry about things like plot or character development. So here we have the picture for this month, I call it The Sphere. (That certainly requires a leap of logic doesn’t it?)

I thought for this month I’d try something considerably less emotionally charged than the last two. It’s quite easy to work from concepts like “sad” or “creepy” but this is just a curious inanimate object, what will your fevered brains make of this? The picture itself is one that I either took or was standing next to the person who did, I cannot quite recall which. I won’t tell you where it was taken, although I suspect some of you readers will instantly recognize it. For those who don’t have the foggiest I don’t want to taint your perceptions with piddly little things like “the truth” or boring old, musty things like “facts” they just get in the way of good old-fashioned writing.

So with the picture at hand let’s spin up the word lathes, set the paragraph saw a-thrumming and stalk out into the workshop of glorious fiction.