Wesewrimo
Originally published at Uncharted Territories. Please leave any comments there.
Now, as I’m sure you’re all well aware, this month is Wesewrimo - Web Series Writing Month! No? Well then, go have a look here to enlighten yourself.
Yes, its yet another slightly twisted Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month for the uninitiated) clone (albeit slightly less ridiculously demanding as you get to set your own goal as long as it’s vaguely web series related). There are a lot of them about these days - you may have just missed JulNoWriMo (July Novel Writing Month), but have no fear because *every* month is NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month), and… well.. you get the idea. Some people will no doubt question the “authenticity” of this proliferation of pretenders that aren’t managed by the excellent people at the Office of Letters and Light (the peeps behind Nano); others will no also doubt question the sheer point of setting oneself such a challenge when its only likely to lead to an explosion of unedited draft material full of plot holes getting posted all over the Internet.
The answer to both lines of questioning is, of course, to lighten up. It doesn’t matter if its National Novel Writing Month, or Scribbling Out Stories in the Bath at Midnight Month - the point of it all is it’s an excuse. A kick up the arse. A reason to get something out of one’s head and down on some paper, no matter how convoluted it may be to begin with. A highway salute to one’s inner editor - that worried little perfectionist who always tries to get in the way of what Nano founder Chris Baty refers to as “ambitious acts of the imagination”. Nanowrimo did it first, and they do it best, but the appearance of so many tributes is a testimony to just how much demand there is for this kind of project. Will Wesewrimo cause tonnes of rushed, bizarre, hole-ridden stories to hit the Internet? Probably, but chances are there’ll be gems as well. And really, who cares anyway? The Internet’s a big place, and it’s through endeavours like these that the Web’s potential for encouraging creativity really begins to be unearthed. And as far as I’m concerned ++creativity = big potential for awesome, and most importantly bucketloads of fun.
I never show my Nano-novels to anyone, because they’re rough and crazy and that’s not the point. But with Wesewrimo, posting is my goal and so posting I shall do. So here it is - my contribution to this month’s explosion of dodgy plots and hare-brained scribblings. I certainly shan’t apologise in advance for any incoherence, lack of plot structure or the fact that it is set in some generic approximation of “the past”. I can’t promise I have more than a vague idea of where it’s going. But I can promise I shall update it every week this month (perhaps more), because otherwise I’ll lose, and that would be far worse even than the terror of having people read the damn thing. May the experiment begin…
The Sigh of the Wind and the Foam on the Sea - Part One
