NaNoWriMo 2022

November is creeping up on us slowly but surely, which means it is almost time for the National Novel Writing Month! Apparently last year I forgot (or ignored) all about it, but this year I fully intend to participate and win! I've been wrestling with a story inside my head for a while now, so I thought it might be the thing to try and get a move on for NaNo, but then a completely different thing popped into my head a couple of weeks ago. Since a new shiny idea is always better motivation in the world of NaNo than something you've been mulling over for months, I'll go with the second one. And I may even write it in English!

The only downside is that my laptop has become a bit old and short in battery life. Also, my license to Word was suspended a couple of months ago, so I don't actually have a text editor to write in. But these are all just technical bumps, the main thing is the inspiration, which seems to have hit.
As always, I'll detail my progress here, if and when there is any typing left in my hands! Wish me luck (if only in spirit)!

NaNoWriMo 2020

 What in the world... it's October 31st already! NaNoWriMo is less than 12 hours away! Luckily, I have actually been thinking about NaNo 2020 for quite some time, have registered on the website, have even donated for the greater good, but I hadn't actually blogged about doing all that. Time to amend this. (Last year my post came at the end of September, so maybe this is just making up for my earliness (is this a word?) then).
It is strange to think NaNo really is around the corner, especially in this weird corona year when time seems to go a lot faster than usual, although nothing much happens or changes over the cause of the days or weeks. You'd think finding time to write 50,000 words is going to be really easy, but if finding the time to blog about it is already hard, that may not really be the case... As I say every year; we shall see how that goes.

The good news is; I actually have a plan! I have a theme, a main character, some character development, several other characters, and a plot. I have even gone as far as to buy myself a whiteboard, coloured pieces of paper and lots of cute little magnets, to map out my storyline. And file little background pieces for all of my characters. But, as every year, I don't know everything already, so those little snippets will be filled out when I suddenly discover they have five siblings under the age of ten, went on holiday to North Korea or have tapdancing for a hobby. Characters never cease to surprise. So I'll still call myself a 'plantser'; someone who has somewhat plotted out their novel, but is mostly 'pantsing', that is; seeing what will come up.

The last couple of years (apart from some diversions into fantasy or romance) I have been writing in the 'realism' genre, which were mostly variations on my very successful 2015 NaNo story. This year, I'm sticking with the style I like, and it is going to be a realistic novel, but I chose 'literary' as my genre nonetheless. I am hoping to get a bit more Sally Rooney/Ali Smithesque vibe going. I have been debating whether I want to write first person narrator or omniscient narrator, and the answer might even be; both, depending on the section. I am a big fan of consistency though, so again; we shall see how that goes. And I am writing in Dutch, yet again.

And as always, I will keep you up to date with my writing progress. There are some nifty new badges on the website, so I may even try to update my wordcount every day. Also, as November 1st is a Sunday, I hope to put in at least 5,000 words tomorrow, to give me some headway in the busier workdays ahead. And then we'll see how much all that plotting and preparing is going to pay off...

NaNoWriMo 2019

It isn't even October yet, but my mind is already drifting to November, also known as National Novel Writing Month. (I am really early this year, usually I write this in the middle of October, as I found out last year.) Of course, I will be participating once again. I've just created my new 'project', which was a bit more of a fuss than usual, because the entire nanowrimo.org website has had a major do-over. I'm not sure if I like this new design better, some things are pretty fancy, but especially the forums seem to have become a lot more difficult. Will have to spend some time figuring that out.

Anyhow, NaNo is not about the website, it's about the writing. And the community. And rewarding yourself with sugary treats every 1,000 words you write. And... Let's stick with the writing first.
After my brief departure into 'romance' last year, I'm firmly back onto 'realism' territory. Who was I kidding? I, who love the basic prose of Sally Rooney, Ian McEwan, Graham Swift. I shouldn't wander off the path of down-to-earth conversations and everyday occurrences that gain hidden depths through unified themes. Or at least I shouldn't stray from attempting to write such a story, as those are the novels I love to read, so those are the stories I love to write.
So, I will be stealing some characters and perhaps plot lines from an earlier NaNo and putting those in a new story that I've been thinking about for a while. I've given myself a very contained time span and location, to avoid going off on various tangents and never finishing. I've even got a basic 'book' structure laid out, all 22 chapters. The chapters will be alternating 'group' chapters and more personal chapters focusing on one of the characters each time around. If that sounds like NaNo 2019 will be a breeze, think again. My characters will probably revolt and break down the entire plot house I've built for them in the first 5,000 words. But that's okay. That's what NaNo is about; just writing and see where it will get you.
As always, I'll be keeping you up to date on my progress here, but since November is still 32 days away, it will be some time. Somehow, being this early doesn't make me feel any more prepared...

NaNoWriMo 2018

Ha, the middle of October is here. That means it's almost November, and almost National Novel Month time! (I just checked, I wrote posts of similar type on October 18th 2013, October 17th 2015, October 14th 2016. I also wrote a 'NaNoWri-NO' post on the 8th of October 2012. It has been quite a streak so far.) As you can see, there is no 'no' in the title of this year's post, and I am pleased to tell you I will be participating again. Last year I kind of dodged the issue and didn't actually write a blog post about it, even though I did register a novel and crammed out about 900 words of a rewrite that wasn't really going anywhere. The rewrite of the same novel I spent two Camp NaNos revising. The rewrite of the novel that I now seriously want to rewrite again, as I have new insights on the matter.
However, NaNoWriMo is something different than Camp NaNo. For one thing, you actually have to stick by the rules, and the rules say you have to write something new from scratch. For another thing, you have to write the full 50,000 words, and as I mentioned in 2016, rewriting just doesn't give you the same drive as a whole new story does. So another rewrite is not what I will be doing this November. Great as my 2015 NaNo novel was, I've spent enough NaNo time writing, rewriting and editing it. It's time for something completely different.

The last time I said that, I went in for 'comedy' and really had to fight to get the words out by the end. So we'll see how this one goes.

The genre I picked is 'romance'. Not a sentence I'd ever thought I'd ever write. But there were are.
I was inspired by Call Me by Your Name, a novel I recently finished, and The Only Story, a novel I'm currently reading. As far apart as those two novels may seem in plot and style and space of the story, they're both about love, and they both spoke to me on a different level. Added to that, I decided it was time for me to write from a female protagonist's point of view, something I haven't done since my 2010 novel. So for the 2018 instalment of NaNoWriMo, I will be writing a romance novel from the point of view of a female protagonist. The working title is "How not to fall in love", which should tell you something about the happiness of the love portrayed in the story. I have working titles for most of the chapters too, and quite probably already an ending. For the style I've settled on a mix between The Only Story and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, and if you don't know what I mean by that, you should definitely read either or both of those novels. The only thing I was still debating was whether to write in Dutch or in English, but I've pretty much settled that the story will take place in Groningen again, which makes for a Dutch novel.
Basically, it feels like I'm more prepared than I ever was. Plot wise, that is. I have no idea what my main character is like, or her love interest, or who will pop up beside them in this story. But that's okay, as long as I roughly know where the plot is taking me, the characters usually sort themselves out. I'll keep you updated on any novelling related info as usual, so in roughly a month's time we'll know whether the crazy novelling path I'm sending myself down this year turns out to be fraught with peril or paved with success!

NaNoWriMo 2016

Yes, it's that time of the year again. The days are shortening, the temperature is dropping, and the amount of mails from the NaNoWriMo headquarter is getting almost unbearably high. November is almost upon us, and November means National Novel Writing Month.
And this year, as in any other year when it is humanly possible, I will be participating. And also this year, no trips to Iceland and (hopefully) no burglaries will stand in my way of winning (not that they held me back last year...).
I was thinking about becoming a NaNo rebel, and instead of starting a whole new novel from scratch, adding 50,000 words to the novel I wrote last year. However, that doesn't really feel right, partly because it is 'against the rules', and partly because it doesn't really generate the same amount of drive and energy to add on to something that already exists. So, in the end, I've decided to write something new all together.
Now I've been digging in my own NaNo archives (you can find all my author info on http://nanowrimo.org/participants/dromera/) and apparently this will be my seventh NaNo. I'm not really sure that is true, because I vaguely remember trying to write something in 2012 as well, but that  attempt probably crashed and burned so quickly that I didn't even save it. Anyhow, six previous NaNo's, one of which (2008) I can't remember a single thing about, other than that I didn't make it. 2007 also failed, but at least I still have the actual file from that year, even if it is just plain text. All the other years, I did manage to write 50,000 words in a month's time, making my total number of NaNo words written around 205,000.
Other noticeable things: of the five years that I actually know the title, four of those titles were the name of the main character (Sylven, Erik, Suzanne, Johannes). Also, I have basically written fantasy in one form or another (often mixed with reality) every single year, except for last year, when the plot really took place in my own town and in our own world. All novels were written in Dutch, except for 2011. Finally, all of my novels have been of the 'serious' kind, except for the 2011 one, which was "Satire, Humor & Parody", according to the genre I picked (although in reality it really was fantasy). All in all, 2011 is the odd one out. Longest title, different genre, and written in English. So this year, that's exactly what I'm going to do again.
I've picked a title that should give something away of how serious you're to take this (The Egg of Col Umbus), and written a short synopsis: Four people all embark upon the same quest: obtaining the Egg of Col Umbus. I've got the basic motivations for all of those four characters, although otherwise I have no idea about who they are. I have a very basic idea of the plot, but I think it will go in a wildly different direction when I actually start writing. This is going to be one of those novels that will happen upon me, and we'll see how it turns out.
The only thing I'm still not sure about is the language I'm going to write in. Funny stuff doesn't really work in Dutch, in my experience, so I'm leaning towards English. However, I haven't really written any long texts in English for about three years now (not counting this blog), so I may have some difficulty there. But, English somehow 'feels' better, so I think I'm going to stick with that. And who knows, I may change my mind halfway through the novel, and nobody is really going to care. 50,000 words is 50,000 words, after all.
I will keep you all updated on my progress once the writing begins, and hopefully the whole thing will go as smoothly as last year. Just writing that down makes me laugh with my own sheer naivite, but hey, who knows? I might actually be getting good at this!

NaNoWriMo 2015

For those of you not in the know: NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month, which started in 1999 (wayyy before November became 'Movember' and all those other fancy scrambled month names) and has been going strong ever since. I've participated in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011, and I won (meaning: I wrote a novel of at least 50,000 words) in the last three of those attempts. Since then, I've been too busy with work (ironically, I started this blog in 2012 because I thought I'd have more time for creative pursuits, but that didn't really work out...) or travels to participate, but this year I will give it another go.
As with the 52 book challenge, I'm not hitting myself over the head if things don't work out, because the truth is that I'm still swamped with a lot of other things. But if you don't try you won't ever succeed, so this morning I 'created my novel', which means I picked a genre and put in a short working title and synopsis. My past NaNo experience tells me that the actual end result will probably be something only vaguely resembling what I wrote today, but the important thing is the first step.
If you've ever thought about writing anything but find yourself having (or making up) a lot of excuses for not actually writing, NaNoWriMo is for you. You have to write a lot, while turning your Inner Editor off: it's about quantity, not quality. December is the time for editing and fine tuning, November is the time for output.
Also, there's a really nice community of people all working towards the same goal, with online forums and real life meet-ups (Write-ins). So even if you don't end up with a novel, you may end up with new friends.
You can find my author's page here, but I'll keep you updated on my progress and word count as November comes around. And who knows; I may even post some excerpts!

NaNoWriMo 2013

NaNoWriMo time is almost upon us again. I've been receiving lots of emails from the Office of Letters and Light already, several from 'my novel' asking to be written, and one from 'the future' in which I have already written my novel.
There must be a parallel universe out there somewhere, because in this one, I will not be writing a novel in November. They mention the 'ideas at the back of your head' and the 'storylines and characters you work out before you fall asleep at night', and this is all very true, but they will also have to stay inside that head for a little while longer.
I am simply too busy. Not only physically too busy, in that I don't have the time to sit down behind a computer and write for an hour to get the 1667 words you need each day, but also mentally too busy. And it is true that I will be taking a week holiday in November, but that will be to relax and free my mind from stuff, not to add more stuff to it.
So apologies to 'my novel'  and 'my future self', but the answer is no.

However, if you, dear reader, do have the time and space, I can only recommend participating in NaNoWriMo. I've done so for several years, I've also won several years, but I can tell you that even without winning it is a great experience. Apart from finally letting go of all those stupid controlling mechanisms and just writing that novel, you get to meet lots of great and interesting people during the parties and writing events. Plus, they have nice goodies. Two weeks is more than enough time to prepare (I once decided that I was going to join on the 30th of October), and even if you can't make it, they have several 'Camp NaNoWriMo'  sessions throughout the year.
Give it a go!

NaNoWri-NO!

Autumn has really arrived. Last Friday we had a full-blown autumn gale which threw all the chestnuts from my parents' chestnut tree and left many people wandering around with broken umbrellas. Now the atmosphere has settled again, no rain, no clouds, and the clear sky brings very cold nights and chilly but extremely fresh mornings. I love the crisp smell of autumn, maybe even more than the warm tinge that announces summer in May. For me, this holds the promise of enjoyment to come: my birthday, Sint Maarten, Sinterklaas, Christmas, all those bright and warm and happy gatherings.
Also, this air gets my creative juices flowing. Normally, I would be preparing for NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month, by thinking up a plot and protagonist while translating their webpages into Dutch. But this year, I'm doing neither. I can barely keep everything together as it is, between my internship and dissertation and social life and committees and what not, so writing 50,000 words of prose is completely out of the question.
It's the first time in 6 years that I won't be competing. The first few years I failed, but I won (which means: I wrote a novel of at least 50,000 words within a month) in 2009, 2010 and 2011. I can't even remember what those novels were about, to be honest, but that's not the point, the point is to write write write until you can't write anymore.
But not for me, this year.
I'd fully resigned to this, and even sent them an e-mail stating that I wouldn't do the translation this year, but be back next year (in which I told them I was 'doing an intern' rather than 'doing an internSHIP', which must have caused some hilarity...), when people on Facebook who've never shown any literary ambitions before suddenly started posting "doing NaNo this year! First time!" and I started receiving emails from the Write-In group that I attend here in Groningen asking when we will first meet up, and stuff about the launch party and what not, and now I feel like I'm missing out on this really big and beautiful thing and I should try and do it anyway. And it's true, I am missing out on a great thing, but really, it's more the atmosphere of connectedness and striving together to reach this great, impossible goal that I'll miss, not the frustration and hard work and cold fingers and jealousy at those who finish within 24 hours while you haven't even started etc etc. But those are the things you forget, while the great people and great moments and great feeling when you've finished stay with you.
So for those who are not swamped with work this November, and feel like they could write a novel, or could be the sort of person who writes novels, or just want to join an amazing community that inspires people around the world: www.nanowrimo.org.
Next year, I'll be back.

Contractions

No, rest assured, this post will have nothing to do with pregnancy or birth or "uterine contraction", as the dictionary says. It's about contracting words. See, I did it just there, with writing "it's" instead of "it is".

Now some of you may have noticed, or perhaps I am the only one who looks this critically at texts, that I do not use contractions very often. I'd rather write "do not" or "will not" or "we will" than "don't", "won't", or "we'll". When it is better for the speed of reading, I do use them, as with "I'd" above, but most of the time I don't (see?). Why is this so?
Well firstly, I think it just looks better. Something like "I'll" can be very confusing, especially when you read fast. And as I am a fast reader, I sometimes skip words, and if you skip a combination of letters that is actually two words (and maybe even the subject and verb of the sentence), the sentence immediately makes no sense anymore and you have to go back and re-read, whereas you can usually skip single words without losing the train of thought.
But in this time of fast typing and fast reading, people generally do use them. (And go even further than that, saying "imma b thr @ 4" or whatever. Now I do use that form of shorthand typing, but just in whatsapp message or when I've run out of characters in my text messages. Never in "proper" texts. But enough of this aside.) So a second reason not to do this, is the fact that contractions are not allowed in academic essays. It is just one of those things, like "indent the first line of a new paragraph if it does not immediately follow a heading" or writing in the passive voice, that you just need to know and apply. You get used to it pretty quickly, especially if you get your head into the "essay-writing" mode.
However, for me there is a third reason that I have taught myself not to use contractions; NaNoWriMo. In NaNo, you write 50,000 words in a month. If you type "I'll", it counts as one word. If you type "I will", it counts as two. So naturally, you train yourself to type both words out fully, as it will give you one extra word written and one less word you still have to type (those writing in English have it easier anyhow, as "I" and "a" are also words, and there are not many languages in which a single letter is a word that is also used a lot).
So there you have it, my obsession with contractions, or rather with staying away from contractions. Maybe it would be better if more people do this, as there seems to be some confusion about "its" and "it's" and "your" and "you're", and whether it is "wo'nt" or "won't" or even "wo'n't", but that's an issue for another time. If you don't know how to type it, don't type it, I'd say. Unless you're writing an essay, or NaNo, of course.

The creative side

Right, time to stop meta-posting and start to actually tell you something interesting!
I have some "hobbies", or things that I like to do when I am not doing my "official" thing, which is studying. But I used to have a part-time job next to my studies for the last 3.5 years, which took up about 16-20 hours of my week. During this time, I did very little else (productively speaking) but study and work. I don't want to complain, it is not as if I did not have the time to do anything else (paint, bake, write, blog), but more that my head was so filled up with this 60 hour work week that there simply was not enough space (in my head) to do anything else (apart from reading, interestingly enough, I always have space in my head for reading).
When I came home from selling overpriced sandwiches, the only thing I wanted to do was eat my dinner while watching TV, preferably some stupid semi-reality program which does not require your full attention and makes you feel good about yourself, or some quiz-like program (I loooove University Challenge) where you can shout the answers at the screen and make you feel good about yourself in another way.
However, I quit that job as of December 1st, and now that the very busy month of holidays and birthdays and celebrations is over, I can already start to feel more space inside my head. This blog is an example of that, but there are other things as well; I did some serious painting for the first time in years yesterday, and I am doing some baking again, and I am planning to learn how to knit soon. No writing ambitions as of yet (still busy with essay writing), but I will try to revise my NaNoWriMo 2011 novel and send it around to those who have asked for it (or maybe post it here? Not sure yet!).
The only thing I have been steadily doing for a year now is Postcrossing, where you send a card (a real, physical postcard) to "a random person" (who is still a member of the website, of course) and then receive one from another person. I love doing this, because it shows so many different cultures and customs, because I love writing and reading long messages, and because it shows me, again and again, that humans the world over have the same dreams and wishes and hopes and fears. A man from the United Arab Emirates wrote on his profile "this project shows me that there is still hope in the world, because people can still communicate, even if their leaders cannot", which I think is very true. Not sure if this would count as "creative thing" for everybody, but it does for me.
So that is the way things are standing right now. I know that doing something creative is important to me, and that I should take the time to do it, but it is so frustrating when you cannot give something your full attention and energy that most times you simply just don't do it. I want to stop not doing things. Not because this is a New Year's resolution or because I think it will make me more interesting or "a better person" or whatever, but just because I miss it, and I think I need it.
So hopefully you'll be seeing some paintings, postcards, pictures, or writings appear on this blog very soon! And if you don't, it may even be because I am busy producing those very same things!