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NaSiUFToMuMo

Friday, 03 November 2006 09:38 AM

It's the third day of NaNoWriMo: I wrote 1,037 words the first day (well under the 1,667 words/day target), and none yesterday. So that project is well behind.

It's also the third day of DrawMo! I sketched a red onion the first day. It came out much more squished-looking than the round and firm original. Yesterday started sketching a salt shaker but my fajita arrived before I could finish. Later at night I sketched my cellphone, which is recognizable as a cellphone but not necessarily mine.

So these do-an-impossible-amount-of-work-in-a-month projects are not off to the best starts. On Saturday I will get to make up for it...and not just because i'll have more time to get in several thousand words of novelling and to try erasing as part of the sketching process (innovation!).

Saturday night is NaDruWriNi -- National Drunken Writing Night.

If you are unfamiliar with the rules, here are the top two:

1. The goal is to drink while you write and write while you’re drunk. Drink as much as you want, write as much as you want, but be responsible, and don’t blame me if you write/do anything stupid.
2. NaDruWriNi is not just for bloggers. Use this as a writing exercise to free yourself of inhibitions. Write in a Moleskine. Write in a spiral notebook. Write on a bar napkin if you must. Just write.

I have enough going on in my life that I can't afford to get sloppy drunk even on a weekend night. But I have noticed that any amount of drinking while writing fiction coats the writing with a slippiness that's amusing. So it can be helpful in the early stages of a novel, when the concept is starting to fill in and the characters take form.

As always, I plan to post periodically here through the evening, so you can track the progressing slippiness and laugh at the typos.

Incidentally, I'm not worried about my progress on either NaNoWriMo or DrawMo. After last year's novel writing, I know that I can pull the whole thing together in the final two weeks of the event, if need be. I'd like not to fall so far behind again this year, but it's reassuring to realize that I have backup resources.

And I have undertaken DrawMo not to make great drawings, or even to improve my drawing ability, but to see what happens. After a few weeks of sketching daily will I start to notice different things about the world around me? Will my creativity change? Will I suddenly become the doodler I have never been? It's all up for grabs, and it's all good.

Also: NaSiUFToMuMo = National Sign Up For Too Much Month

UPDATE: I had thought I would drink bourbon during NaDruWriNi, as I typically do. And probably there will be a little liquid maize at some point in the evening. But in my web stats I see that someone came to this blog by searching for Death in the Afternoon drink -- which this blog was able to answer nicely. And I think that's exactly what I should drink during tomorrow night's festivities -- especially with the Hemingway angle. An exotic cocktail will surely suit the evening.

Permanent link | Categories: Coming attractions , Lush life , NaNoWriMo , Writing/publishing
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