Tag Archives: High Noon in Outer Space

Onslaught III: Death Knell

This will be my last post on the topic of NaNoWriMo for this year, as last night, when the sun had gone to bed and the fingers of frost were clawing at my window I did what I had long thought impossible. I finished.

Well I say finished. More accurately I passed the 50,000 word mark. The titanic wordascope that I have been plugging away at all November is by no means ‘finished’. Those fifty thousand words in their extant form consist of a prologue, chapters 1 to 10 and the finishing chapter, number 29. Nineteen chapters that were planned sit in an unwritten limbo. I have a beginning, I have an end, but the middle? That’s not even started yet. Continue reading


Onslaught II: The Soul Crushing Apathy

Oh how much of a difference a week makes. What had been a fairly mundane demand of 1667 words a day has now become an uphill struggle, a real slog through a treacley sea of shitty words.

I’m still on the NaNo wagon for now, but how much longer I can hang on I’m not entirely sure. I’d say I’m getting pretty close to burn out. Which would be slightly frustrating, especially with about 31,500 words under my belt. I thought at passing 25k I was over the hump and it’d be a nice downhill slope to the finish line. Nope, turns out it was just a slight flattening before another big hill. Arse.

Continue reading


Onslaught

Tuesday saw the start of my first attempt at NaNoWriMo. I have now been slogging away at it for almost five days. I’m honestly not entirely sure who I am any more, nor what I have become. I have a strange nagging feeling that there is something akin to unholy witchcraft about the entire concept of NaNoWriMo. There’s no pressure to perform, no real demands, only a vague nebulous challenge of “oh go on, just see if you can hit 50,000 words by the end of this month. If you can’t do it that no one’s going to think less of you. We’re all friends here.” It’s insidious and sneaky. I just simply cannot stop writing. It’s an urge that’s gotten under my skin, it’s a contagious disease spreading across the blogosphere and the internet. There is no cure, there is only success or failure.

Continue reading


A Relentless Torrent of Verbiage

Earlier this week I came to a decision, quite possibly a very foolish decision. I have decided, after much humming and harring, that this will be the first year I tackle the daunting behemoth that is NaNoWriMo. I have for many years had the intention of participating, but this is an intention I normally don’t remember until sometime around November 28th, but which point it’s a little bit on the late side, unless you’re the sort of madman (or madwoman, let’s not judge here) willing to write a minimum of 18 words every minute for 48 hours without a break of any form. I am not one of those types of madman, I am a completely different, but no less mad, type of madman. I do think that I am now in a better position to attempt it than I ever have been. Previously I’ve had trifling concerns like that degree thing I was paying several thousand pounds a year to do, or a job which demand I work 45 hour weeks and spend the remaining 67 hours, where I wasn’t asleep,  gibbering in the corner. On top of that there was the pesky demands of being surrounded by people who did not consider “hermit” to be a valid life choice. And that despite being several miles away, through rain, sleet or snow, as well as being significantly more expensive, a pub, and not your bedroom was the best place to get drunk. Now I’m a graduate, with a fairly sane job, living in a strange and bewildering place where I know precisely no one.

It probably also helps that I’ve actually got an idea this year too.

Continue reading