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Why Nanowrimo in November?
Because Mur Lafferty asks every year. So I thought for two years and came up with this list.
10. 30 days is easier to divide into 50,000 than 31.
9. Because for the Northern Hemisphere there are no summer sports/heat to
distract us.
8. In most parts of the world you do get a 25 hour day for one month out of the
year–and it happens in November.
7. No one can claim to religious reasons for not participating (except maybe
Jews once in a few years).
6. It’s a month before the dead publishing lull of December forcing people not
to submit their bloody manuscript during that month.
5. If you can reach 50,000 words in such a crazy month then why not other
months?
4. You get to finish the year with an accomplishment if your year sucked so far.
3. You get to dress the month before as your character and maybe get inspiration
from the Halloween Costumes.
2. November is the only month that starts with ‘N’. It also is abbreviated
N-O-V. What else starts with N-O-V? Novel! Forget when Nanowrimo is? It’s
November! It’s easier to remember.
1. Because Chris Baty says so and a lot of people seem to have a huge crush on
him, so will obey him no matter what.
I wrote this list originally on a bus because there is no such thing as the
perfect writing conditions. Nanowrimo definitely teaches you that.
Yahoo and me
So when I was changing my password of something like 12 years (yes, it had to change), my e-mail account froze. This means I can see all of my groups, all of the contacts, all of the *other* things except my e-mail. Yes, I was so thrilled especially since I was waiting on a response to say a few jobs and also from an agent (with yay or nay).
But in a way, I think this is kind of like a “clean up” time in my life. I’m finding new priorities, finding my old mistakes and also looking square at myself and seeing if it is something I truly like to see. Where did I screw up? Where did I go wrong? Can I do better in the future?
So I ended up going through all of my old e-mail contacts (because I can see those, I just can’t e-mail them. Isn’t *that* lovely too?)
And I saw lists of people that I haven’t seen for ages. Whatever happened to Saadia Iqbal? What happened to Maren Boyle. I have no idea if they are married, in college still, if they moved on? And my old Mentor from the Canisius college program, Tom C. Joyce… I kind of looked at his name and had this writerly thought–hey if I get published, could I make him call me? There are thousands of people we touch the lives of and forget about. Whether it’s an old colleague a classmate, a friend, or someone who just went missing from the Internet.
Does Otakimi-chan still remember me before she was banned from the Internet by her mother? I still remember her…
Does Dave Fuhrman remember the poetry board I left him to inherit before Mr. Bailey, my old HS teacher, died? I remember him too.
These people being there in my address book make me remember and reflect on myself, and perhaps they have pieces of me that I can’t even remember. It kind of makes me sentimental and want to ace this thing called life even more. Because I think my passion for writing is kind of a dream of trying to share it with people, make them think, wonder . They may have forgotten about me, but perhaps I may exist to them again through that act. Maybe I’ll make them scream and say wow. I may make them proud.
It also makes me realize how hard I try to hang onto friends, even the ones I lost contact with. Kaori Asakawa of Japan… I miss her still, despite the years we haven’t spoken.
These people, I put them back into my new contact list with the full knowledge that the e-mail addresses are probably old or wrong, but I think I still desire to talk to them again. Maybe the feelings of the next book after the Magic Solutions, Inc. I’m trying to publish will reflect those feelings of lost connections. I think I’d like that.