An update

It's three days in and I'm already behind. Food and water are getting scarce and I think I heard something rustling in the bushes last night...

I've only done about 1200 words of my primary NaNo but about 3000 words of a secondary one which is designed to stop me from putting more adult content in my primary (which is a Young Adult novel) by giving me somewhere else to work out those violent, sexy, foul-mouthed and cynical itches I can't put in my primary. It currently looks like my primary is the winner right now, but I'm trying to work on both so I don't get bored. Not sure how I'll work it out in the end, since I had started my secondary before November, so it's technically cheating, but I'm hoping that added together the words I write in November on the two pieces will make 50,000. Must...resist...temptation to just write the violent, sexy piece and actually write the other one, because if I don't, the characters that need to be in it will never exist.

One of the best aspects of the NaNoWriMo site is the large archive of pep-talks dating from 2007 to the current year. These pep-talks are also sent out via e-mail to participants who've signed up on the website, but it's good to have past years archived. They're definitely worth looking at, as event organisers Chris Baty and Lindsey Grant write regular pep-talks for every week of the process and one before and after November itself, and they also get established authors to write pep-talks, which are often wonderful if you're a fan of the author. You'll find Philip Pullman, Neil Gaiman, Gail Carson Levine, Robin McKinley, Jonathan Stroud, Piers Anthony, Meg Cabot, Kelley Armstrong, and many, many more. Also, Kristin Cashore, whose blog (and writing!) I am a big fan of, wrote a pep talk one year and still blogs about NaNo, and Nicola Morgan is also supportive of it on her blog. The one thing to be wary of is that while Chris Baty's pep-talks are organised and dated by year and date (so you can tell at what point in the month you are meant to read them), the others are organised alphabetically and it's impossible to tell what time of the month they refer to, which can occasionally be an issue. So I made myself a handy chart of 2008/2009 (I wasn't doing it in 2007) so I could remember when to read the pep-talks. Of course, most of them are just general advice, but it's a bit unnerving to open one up and read "Congratulations! You've finished your novel, isn't it a great feeling?" when you're only a week in. They are definitely worth a read, though, and a really great motivator.

The Forums are lovely and a great place to go if you feel lonely or angsty or frustrated. There are word wars, inspirational prompts, dares and challenges, and plot-solvers aplenty. It's a great community and a fun place to be. For those who've formally signed up and are keeping their wordcount up to date (I'm infamously bad for forgetting to do so), there are cool charts and stats for your progress, as well as guilt-tripping things saying you're behind schedule and what your current cumulative goal is. There's almost daily news on the site throughout November, videos, the personal experience of spotlit NaNo writers, a massive cumulative wordcount of all NaNos put together and a 'Procrastination Station' where you can find challenges, dares and suggestions of things to do when you're bored. Overall, the support provided by the Office of Letters and Light is phenomenal and a big part of why NaNo is so brilliant and successful.

On the downside today, if the university puts up its fees for the second year of my part-time MA in accordance with the government report, I will probably not be able to afford to do my second year. But that's fine, though, because I'm being self-indulgent by doing further education in a non-vocational subject, right? I mean, I should probably get a real job and become a useful member of society instead of splitting my time between a part-time job, a part-time degree and working towards what I hope will someday come to fruition as a writing career. After all, survival is what matters, not self-fulfilment or being all you can be. The intellectual disciplines are dead because they are not useful, and do not serve the great Capitalists in the sky, unless I'm rich enough to cough up almost treble the previous fees or poor enough and doing a pre-decided subject area that means I can get support.

Ugh, sorry, I sound like an overexcited Socialist (not that I have anything against Socialists in general), but it really gets me down. We're ending up in a world that is putting the divides back up so the only people who can access purely intellectual disciplines are the rich, and the poor must become the workers once more. I'm glad I've got my BA at least, but I really feel sorry for those who are coming to the end of their schooling and have to start making decisions about university. What the hell legacy are we leaving? Without the arts and humanities, you end up with a functioning society that works like clockwork, but that's not enough for a civilisation.

On the other hand, today brought good news of the developments of medical technology: read this report on a retinal implant to help a blind man and see if it doesn't warm your cockles just a little.