NaNoWriMo: The Return of PK's Sense of Humor
My sense of humor is back, though I don't promise I'll actually be funny to anyone else. So, here's my first 2531 words!
A POSSIBLY SATIRICAL, ABSURDLY SELF REFERENTIAL, AND PARTIALLY FICTIONALIZED AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL OF ONE WOMAN'S ATTEMPT AT PARTICIPATING IN NANOWRIMO, WITH ABUSE OF HYPHENS AND THEIR LACK
"Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. Forty-nine thousand, nine hundred and eighty-four words to go!" the aspiring young novelist sighed, in either an homage to the late Charles Schulz and his delightful comic Peanuts, in which the characters had been known to begin school essays by writing out an overly long title and then counting up the words in it and sighing over the required number of words they had left to write, or a total ripoff thereof. If it was an homage, it was probably ruined by stopping to point it out; if it would otherwise be a ripoff, it might be mitigated by doing so instead. She paused then to wonder whether this was merely a literary allusion (albeit one pounded in with a hammer, or maybe a sledgehammer, and now beaten into the ground) or if it was enough to cause her possibly satirical, absurdly self referential, and partially fictionalized autobiographical novel of one woman's (that would be hers, of course) attempt at participating in NaNoWriMo in 2006, with abuse of hyphens and their lack, to be considered fan fiction.
Having carefully typed out "fan fiction" as two words instead of her usual one, both of which were at least informally considered legitimate spellings, or as legitimate as anything about fan fiction got (unless it was about something that was out of copyright and had entered the public domain, or better yet something that was considered folklore... could she spell that folk lore, she wondered?), and then constructed a long sentence of dubious grammatical value around the discussion of this, she stopped to check her wordcount.
(She had the sudden premonition or feeling or perhaps, since it was technically under her control after all, just a prediction, that checking word count was going to be a frequent feature of her narrative. She stopped to separate "wordcount" into the two words "word count," which might be a correct spelling, and wondered if including the checking of word count in a possibly satirical, absurdly self referential, and partially fictionalized autobiographical novel of one woman's (that would be hers, of course) attempt at participating in NaNoWriMo, with abuse of hyphens and their lack, was similar to including elaborate descriptions in an ordinary novel of characters' visits to the toilet and the biological elimination procedures that took place there. And by biological elimination procedures, she wasn't talking about a murder mystery taking place in the bathroom, though that might not be a good idea.
(She considered separating "bathroom" into two words, but decided that might be going a little far even for NaNoWriMo, also known as National Novel Writing Month. Writing out National Novel Writing Month might not be a bad idea, though. Perhaps later if she was pressed for word count, she would go back and use the search and replace function in her souped up text editor to replace "NaNoWriMo" with "NaNoWriMo, also known as National Novel Writing Month" in each instance. That was certainly an approved NaNoWriMo padding technique, much like naming one of your characters "John" and later going back and using the search and replace function in your word processor or text editor or whatever you were using to replace each instance of his name with "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt." Although it occurred to her that she might have to skip her current paragraph in that case, or it would look awfully silly. But according to some people, that was the point, wasn't it?)
At this point she realized that she had gotten sidetracked and forgotten to check the word count after all. She stopped to remedy this situation. She was only at six hundred and twenty eight words.
She sighed. Then she paused, went back, and heaved a sigh instead, because that took up more words.
But forgive me, dear reader, both for what I am actually about to apologize for, and for the abrupt shift in tense, style, and point of view. I have neglected to tell you about the genesis of this possibly satirical, absurdly self referential, and partially fictionalized autobiographical novel of one woman's (that would be MINE, of course) attempt at participating in NaNoWriMo, which is short for National Novel Writing Month, with abuse of hyphens and their lack.
Once upon a time there was a girl who was not sure whether she wanted to participate in NaNoWriMo (also known as National Novel Writing Month) or not. She had heard about this writing challenge for a few years from her friends, all of whom made it sound like a difficult but exciting and encouraging challenge which was, at its heart, all about sitting down and getting some writing done. The previous year, she had gone to the official site and read the official rules, and she had thought they sounded like they were written by a fairly laid-back person who didn't really get how some people's minds worked, but given lines like "People who take themselves and their writing too seriously should go elsewhere" and "If you think you're writing a novel, we think you're writing a novel too" (both of which she paraphrased from memory when recounting this event, and which therefore probably are not as precise as the use of quotation marks, also known to some people as inverted commas unless that's only when you use single quotes, would normally suggest, but then she did warn you this was partially fictionalized), must almost certainly have really been more interested in getting people to sit down and write than in whether they followed some of the sillier rules to the letter. She had still been a little discouraged by the idea that continuing a story or collaboratively writing a novel of double the usual fifty thousand word length would be technically against the rules, though. (On the other hand, at that point she thought that "no, you can't share writing duties" referred to splitting up the fifty thousand words, not to each writing fifty thousand words of the same story.)
The rules forums made her even more discouraged. (While recounting this, she stopped to check her word count.) She was beginning to think that it wouldn't be at all surprising if some people there, including at least one staff member, were to announce that any National Novel Writing Month writer who used the back space or delete key, or even the arrow keys or the mouse's control over the cursor, to correct even so much as a typographical error, were vile and despicable and disgusting, revolting, horrible cheaters whose disregard for the rules and flaunting their flouting of the rules were ruining the experience for everyone and cheapening the claim of winning NaNoWriMo for all the honest writers.
Except for one bright, shining, luminous soul who pointed out that there was not anything about sequels' being forbidden, and therefore if you really wanted to continue something, you might as well call the previous part a previous work and the new fifty thousand words for NaNoWriMo a sequel.
(She stopped explaining last year's experience and checked her word count again. Over a thousand already, she saw. Woo hoo!)
Anyway, during the month before NaNoWriMo 2006, she wobbled back and forth a lot. One day, in an excess of enthusiasm, she signed up again. Later that same day she saw examples of how some of the arbitrary rules which the founder of NaNoWriMo had intended to help get people writing were in fact discouraging writers. Good writers. And she began to feel depressed and traitorous again.
In the morning, she realized she was being stupid, and made the following post to her Livejournal. Because she had already posted this once, and because it is important in writing to keep your audience in mind sometimes, she was careful to mark it as previously posted material when she posted her current NaNoWriMo progress to her Livejournal as well. She did it like this:
HEY, YOU! I ALREADY POSTED THIS PART, SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO READ IT. I'LL LET YOU KNOW WHEN I GET TO THE END.
I suspect that title looks more pretentious than punnish at this point, but I guess I'll leave it.
I have been waffling back and forth about NaNoWriMo for some weeks. I did it last year, yes. (To anyone who hasn't forgotten about "Something Better Than This": not abandoned. Honest. *mumbleblush*) On the other hand, last year I also kept going back to the Rules Forum (kind of like picking at a pimple) and growing increasingly annoyed. And this year I've been alternating between enthusiasm for the idea I used to think NaNoWriMo was about -- getting people around to writing, en masse and crazy -- and disgust with myself for thinking about going along with an event that deliberately excluded and discouraged anyone who, say, liked to cowrite (and was willing to go for 50K apiece) or had been trying to get around to getting past the beginning rather than starting at all.
So yesterday I actually signed up, in an excess of enthusiasm, and last night I ran across an example of the discouragement and went to sleep and woke up gloomy. It occurred to me that this was pretty definitely a case of taking things too seriously.
Aha.
Taking oneself too seriously is discouraged in the official rules. There are all sorts of weird arbitrary things people do to pad wordcount -- and those are approved. The founder of NaNoWriMo explains in the history section that he produced most of the regulations on the theory (well, he calls it knowledge) that unbending rules and merciless deadlines were necessary to get writers moving.
So. I maintain -- and I refuse to care if any of the staff or anyone in the Rules Forum or Chris Baty himself disagrees, and I'm not going to ask them either -- that if these unbending rules are getting in the way of writing, the correct thing to do is logically to go right up to the edge and contort. They can't bend to get more in your way, remember?
You already have some text written? As some unusually sensible person in the rules forum said last year, dub it notes or call it a previous installment -- you can edit the works together after November. You want to write with someone? Say you're writing interrelated stories out of order. Heck, you want to write a screenplay, which he explicitly says is outside the scope of NaNoWriMo? Call it a novel in an unusual format. Whatever. Just, for heaven's sake, don't ask people to tell you no.
So there.
OKAY, I'M DONE WITH THE REPOSTING. YOU CAN START READING AGAIN IF YOU WANT TO SEE SOMETHING NEW NOW.
She stopped abusing capslock and checked her wordcount again.
Anyway, later in the day, while she was taking a walk, she recovered her sense of humor again. The previous post was really still pretty grumpy, but now she knew what she should do.
There was nothing in the rules of NaNoWriMo against having your characters tell stories, whether they had anything to do with the main plot or not. In fact, it was encouraged as a padding technique! There was nothing in the rules of NaNoWriMo against having your characters... write stories! There was nothing in the rules of NaNoWriMo against being repetitive, either, which was lucky for this paragraph. There was nothing in the rules of NaNoWriMo about including elements from real life, either.
She could write a possibly satirical, absurdly self referential, and partially fictionalized autobiographical novel of one woman's (that would be MINE, of course) attempt at participating in NaNoWriMo, which is short for National Novel Writing Month, with abuse of hyphens and their lack, and she could write it about her writing over the course of November, and that way she could include continued stories and cowritten stories (or at least her sections of them; she still felt that copying lengthy segments of what someone else had written would be cheating, even if she did turn her cowriter into a character in her novel) and anything else she felt like writing, and it would all be totally legitimate according to the Officially Encouraged Padding Techniques.
And at this point she checked her wordcount again and found that she had broken TWO thousand words and was therefore well and safely past the average daily wordcount of one thousand, six hundred and sixty-seven words (which is fifty thousand divided by thirty, rounded up because it's annoying to write two thirds of a word and stop). But she had signed up for the weekly Emails of Encouragement from Chris Baty, and the first one advised that you should try to get a head start during the first week and write two thousand and five hundred words per day or so. So she paused and reviewed the Officially Encouraged Padding Techniques.
She had already separated some words that could be either one word or two into two, although she had not done this very consistently. She had employed repetition and excessive description. She had had her main character compose a Livejournal post (which she really did write in November, so it was all right).
She considered padding with really, really, really, really long strings of modifiers, but got bored.
She considered asking someone for a challenge, but decided she didn't feel like it.
Then she realized she had not yet used the technique of introducing a totally irrelevant plot device or even a totally irrelevant subplot, so she decided it was time for an unexpected twist!
And then she was devoured by the carnivorous rabbit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and was afterward most viciously dismembered and torn apart for her irreverent mockery of the concept of NaNoWriMo (also known as National Novel Writing Month) by the winged monkeys of Chris Baty, which he mentions as the enforcers of the NaNoWriMo rules in the history section on the official site.
Then she checked her wordcount. She was not quite up to two thousand and five hundred words yet. (She went back and edited her previous sentence, which might not be in the spirit of NaNoWriMo because it involved editing, but she edited it to make it LONGER so it ought to be all right. Then she went back and changed an earlier instance of "okay" to read "all right.")
Still, two thousand and four hundred words was not a bad start!
And then she decided that this story was boring, and she didn't much like the main character anyway and suspected she might be a Dreaded Mary Sue, and on top of all that it was hard to go on writing with a main character who'd been eaten by the carnivorous rabbit from Monty Python and its big sharp pointy teeth, and that was even if she had not afterward been torn apart and flung about by winged monkeys, which do not restrain themselves to flinging their own poo.
So she decided to chuck it all and write something else instead.
A POSSIBLY SATIRICAL, ABSURDLY SELF REFERENTIAL, AND PARTIALLY FICTIONALIZED AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL OF ONE WOMAN'S ATTEMPT AT PARTICIPATING IN NANOWRIMO, WITH ABUSE OF HYPHENS AND THEIR LACK
"Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. Forty-nine thousand, nine hundred and eighty-four words to go!" the aspiring young novelist sighed, in either an homage to the late Charles Schulz and his delightful comic Peanuts, in which the characters had been known to begin school essays by writing out an overly long title and then counting up the words in it and sighing over the required number of words they had left to write, or a total ripoff thereof. If it was an homage, it was probably ruined by stopping to point it out; if it would otherwise be a ripoff, it might be mitigated by doing so instead. She paused then to wonder whether this was merely a literary allusion (albeit one pounded in with a hammer, or maybe a sledgehammer, and now beaten into the ground) or if it was enough to cause her possibly satirical, absurdly self referential, and partially fictionalized autobiographical novel of one woman's (that would be hers, of course) attempt at participating in NaNoWriMo in 2006, with abuse of hyphens and their lack, to be considered fan fiction.
Having carefully typed out "fan fiction" as two words instead of her usual one, both of which were at least informally considered legitimate spellings, or as legitimate as anything about fan fiction got (unless it was about something that was out of copyright and had entered the public domain, or better yet something that was considered folklore... could she spell that folk lore, she wondered?), and then constructed a long sentence of dubious grammatical value around the discussion of this, she stopped to check her wordcount.
(She had the sudden premonition or feeling or perhaps, since it was technically under her control after all, just a prediction, that checking word count was going to be a frequent feature of her narrative. She stopped to separate "wordcount" into the two words "word count," which might be a correct spelling, and wondered if including the checking of word count in a possibly satirical, absurdly self referential, and partially fictionalized autobiographical novel of one woman's (that would be hers, of course) attempt at participating in NaNoWriMo, with abuse of hyphens and their lack, was similar to including elaborate descriptions in an ordinary novel of characters' visits to the toilet and the biological elimination procedures that took place there. And by biological elimination procedures, she wasn't talking about a murder mystery taking place in the bathroom, though that might not be a good idea.
(She considered separating "bathroom" into two words, but decided that might be going a little far even for NaNoWriMo, also known as National Novel Writing Month. Writing out National Novel Writing Month might not be a bad idea, though. Perhaps later if she was pressed for word count, she would go back and use the search and replace function in her souped up text editor to replace "NaNoWriMo" with "NaNoWriMo, also known as National Novel Writing Month" in each instance. That was certainly an approved NaNoWriMo padding technique, much like naming one of your characters "John" and later going back and using the search and replace function in your word processor or text editor or whatever you were using to replace each instance of his name with "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt." Although it occurred to her that she might have to skip her current paragraph in that case, or it would look awfully silly. But according to some people, that was the point, wasn't it?)
At this point she realized that she had gotten sidetracked and forgotten to check the word count after all. She stopped to remedy this situation. She was only at six hundred and twenty eight words.
She sighed. Then she paused, went back, and heaved a sigh instead, because that took up more words.
But forgive me, dear reader, both for what I am actually about to apologize for, and for the abrupt shift in tense, style, and point of view. I have neglected to tell you about the genesis of this possibly satirical, absurdly self referential, and partially fictionalized autobiographical novel of one woman's (that would be MINE, of course) attempt at participating in NaNoWriMo, which is short for National Novel Writing Month, with abuse of hyphens and their lack.
Once upon a time there was a girl who was not sure whether she wanted to participate in NaNoWriMo (also known as National Novel Writing Month) or not. She had heard about this writing challenge for a few years from her friends, all of whom made it sound like a difficult but exciting and encouraging challenge which was, at its heart, all about sitting down and getting some writing done. The previous year, she had gone to the official site and read the official rules, and she had thought they sounded like they were written by a fairly laid-back person who didn't really get how some people's minds worked, but given lines like "People who take themselves and their writing too seriously should go elsewhere" and "If you think you're writing a novel, we think you're writing a novel too" (both of which she paraphrased from memory when recounting this event, and which therefore probably are not as precise as the use of quotation marks, also known to some people as inverted commas unless that's only when you use single quotes, would normally suggest, but then she did warn you this was partially fictionalized), must almost certainly have really been more interested in getting people to sit down and write than in whether they followed some of the sillier rules to the letter. She had still been a little discouraged by the idea that continuing a story or collaboratively writing a novel of double the usual fifty thousand word length would be technically against the rules, though. (On the other hand, at that point she thought that "no, you can't share writing duties" referred to splitting up the fifty thousand words, not to each writing fifty thousand words of the same story.)
The rules forums made her even more discouraged. (While recounting this, she stopped to check her word count.) She was beginning to think that it wouldn't be at all surprising if some people there, including at least one staff member, were to announce that any National Novel Writing Month writer who used the back space or delete key, or even the arrow keys or the mouse's control over the cursor, to correct even so much as a typographical error, were vile and despicable and disgusting, revolting, horrible cheaters whose disregard for the rules and flaunting their flouting of the rules were ruining the experience for everyone and cheapening the claim of winning NaNoWriMo for all the honest writers.
Except for one bright, shining, luminous soul who pointed out that there was not anything about sequels' being forbidden, and therefore if you really wanted to continue something, you might as well call the previous part a previous work and the new fifty thousand words for NaNoWriMo a sequel.
(She stopped explaining last year's experience and checked her word count again. Over a thousand already, she saw. Woo hoo!)
Anyway, during the month before NaNoWriMo 2006, she wobbled back and forth a lot. One day, in an excess of enthusiasm, she signed up again. Later that same day she saw examples of how some of the arbitrary rules which the founder of NaNoWriMo had intended to help get people writing were in fact discouraging writers. Good writers. And she began to feel depressed and traitorous again.
In the morning, she realized she was being stupid, and made the following post to her Livejournal. Because she had already posted this once, and because it is important in writing to keep your audience in mind sometimes, she was careful to mark it as previously posted material when she posted her current NaNoWriMo progress to her Livejournal as well. She did it like this:
HEY, YOU! I ALREADY POSTED THIS PART, SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO READ IT. I'LL LET YOU KNOW WHEN I GET TO THE END.
I suspect that title looks more pretentious than punnish at this point, but I guess I'll leave it.
I have been waffling back and forth about NaNoWriMo for some weeks. I did it last year, yes. (To anyone who hasn't forgotten about "Something Better Than This": not abandoned. Honest. *mumbleblush*) On the other hand, last year I also kept going back to the Rules Forum (kind of like picking at a pimple) and growing increasingly annoyed. And this year I've been alternating between enthusiasm for the idea I used to think NaNoWriMo was about -- getting people around to writing, en masse and crazy -- and disgust with myself for thinking about going along with an event that deliberately excluded and discouraged anyone who, say, liked to cowrite (and was willing to go for 50K apiece) or had been trying to get around to getting past the beginning rather than starting at all.
So yesterday I actually signed up, in an excess of enthusiasm, and last night I ran across an example of the discouragement and went to sleep and woke up gloomy. It occurred to me that this was pretty definitely a case of taking things too seriously.
Aha.
Taking oneself too seriously is discouraged in the official rules. There are all sorts of weird arbitrary things people do to pad wordcount -- and those are approved. The founder of NaNoWriMo explains in the history section that he produced most of the regulations on the theory (well, he calls it knowledge) that unbending rules and merciless deadlines were necessary to get writers moving.
So. I maintain -- and I refuse to care if any of the staff or anyone in the Rules Forum or Chris Baty himself disagrees, and I'm not going to ask them either -- that if these unbending rules are getting in the way of writing, the correct thing to do is logically to go right up to the edge and contort. They can't bend to get more in your way, remember?
You already have some text written? As some unusually sensible person in the rules forum said last year, dub it notes or call it a previous installment -- you can edit the works together after November. You want to write with someone? Say you're writing interrelated stories out of order. Heck, you want to write a screenplay, which he explicitly says is outside the scope of NaNoWriMo? Call it a novel in an unusual format. Whatever. Just, for heaven's sake, don't ask people to tell you no.
So there.
OKAY, I'M DONE WITH THE REPOSTING. YOU CAN START READING AGAIN IF YOU WANT TO SEE SOMETHING NEW NOW.
She stopped abusing capslock and checked her wordcount again.
Anyway, later in the day, while she was taking a walk, she recovered her sense of humor again. The previous post was really still pretty grumpy, but now she knew what she should do.
There was nothing in the rules of NaNoWriMo against having your characters tell stories, whether they had anything to do with the main plot or not. In fact, it was encouraged as a padding technique! There was nothing in the rules of NaNoWriMo against having your characters... write stories! There was nothing in the rules of NaNoWriMo against being repetitive, either, which was lucky for this paragraph. There was nothing in the rules of NaNoWriMo about including elements from real life, either.
She could write a possibly satirical, absurdly self referential, and partially fictionalized autobiographical novel of one woman's (that would be MINE, of course) attempt at participating in NaNoWriMo, which is short for National Novel Writing Month, with abuse of hyphens and their lack, and she could write it about her writing over the course of November, and that way she could include continued stories and cowritten stories (or at least her sections of them; she still felt that copying lengthy segments of what someone else had written would be cheating, even if she did turn her cowriter into a character in her novel) and anything else she felt like writing, and it would all be totally legitimate according to the Officially Encouraged Padding Techniques.
And at this point she checked her wordcount again and found that she had broken TWO thousand words and was therefore well and safely past the average daily wordcount of one thousand, six hundred and sixty-seven words (which is fifty thousand divided by thirty, rounded up because it's annoying to write two thirds of a word and stop). But she had signed up for the weekly Emails of Encouragement from Chris Baty, and the first one advised that you should try to get a head start during the first week and write two thousand and five hundred words per day or so. So she paused and reviewed the Officially Encouraged Padding Techniques.
She had already separated some words that could be either one word or two into two, although she had not done this very consistently. She had employed repetition and excessive description. She had had her main character compose a Livejournal post (which she really did write in November, so it was all right).
She considered padding with really, really, really, really long strings of modifiers, but got bored.
She considered asking someone for a challenge, but decided she didn't feel like it.
Then she realized she had not yet used the technique of introducing a totally irrelevant plot device or even a totally irrelevant subplot, so she decided it was time for an unexpected twist!
And then she was devoured by the carnivorous rabbit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and was afterward most viciously dismembered and torn apart for her irreverent mockery of the concept of NaNoWriMo (also known as National Novel Writing Month) by the winged monkeys of Chris Baty, which he mentions as the enforcers of the NaNoWriMo rules in the history section on the official site.
Then she checked her wordcount. She was not quite up to two thousand and five hundred words yet. (She went back and edited her previous sentence, which might not be in the spirit of NaNoWriMo because it involved editing, but she edited it to make it LONGER so it ought to be all right. Then she went back and changed an earlier instance of "okay" to read "all right.")
Still, two thousand and four hundred words was not a bad start!
And then she decided that this story was boring, and she didn't much like the main character anyway and suspected she might be a Dreaded Mary Sue, and on top of all that it was hard to go on writing with a main character who'd been eaten by the carnivorous rabbit from Monty Python and its big sharp pointy teeth, and that was even if she had not afterward been torn apart and flung about by winged monkeys, which do not restrain themselves to flinging their own poo.
So she decided to chuck it all and write something else instead.