Hi readers. It’s such a lovely Monday morning, I thought I’d put the self-fascination and self-proclaimed neurosis on hold and let the other sixty million bloggers out there cover for me in these areas for a day. What I want to I talk about instead is this event called NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month. I’m really a few days late in telling you this so let’s get started right away.
People always ask me what it is and I always find it difficult to come up with a proper explanation so this time I am going to write it down on this blog.
What happens is each year, participants will each try to write a novel of at least 50,000 words, starting on November 1st and ending by November 30th. It’s called National Novel Writing Month because it was initially started off for Americans but it’s really an international event now because people all over the world have been taking part for the past few years.
There are no entry fees, no formal registration processes you cannot skip and no policing of rules. In fact, there are no actual rules - just “goals”. No, wait – come to think of it, there’s only one goal for each participant – come up with a novel of at least 50,000 words.
Why would anybody do such a thing? Different people will have different reasons but I’ll list some that I can think of:
They want to write but is waiting for the right time to do it
They have stories they want to tell and never thought of writing until now
They want to write but need some guidance and support
It’s nice to have other people know about your frustrations even if you’re not prepared to show them your work
So, what happens to the manuscripts? Nothing really. You’re not obliged to sell it or show it to anybody.
What do participants get out of this? Since it’s not a contest, there are no publishing contracts, cash prizes or any tangible rewards up for grabs. In the end, if you succeed, you will have a novel manuscript you wrote yourself and you can do whatever you want with it – get it published, show it to your friends, read it to your grandchildren, enter it in a writing competition, lock it up in a safe, re-write it to perfection – whatever you want.
How would they know I’ve really reached 50,000 words? What if I cheat? Nobody would really know and, to be honest, nobody would really care since you would not be cheating anybody else out of a spot on anything important.
What do the organisers get out of this? Nothing really. If you want to contribute, you can make donations and the money will go towards building libraries in Vietnam, but for the writing novels in November deal, you pay no money.
What’s to stop me from writing a novel by myself, at a time more convenient to me? Nothing. Many people have the will, belief and ambition to write books on their own and many people don’t. However, I think NaNoWriMo is great for helping bring books out of people who would otherwise not have written them.
Why November? Why not January or March or October? Listen buddy, if you’re going to be wasting my time and yours asking questions for the sake of asking questions, then we could be here a long time and before you know it, November has come and gone – in which case, it should be obvious that this event probably isn’t for you, so you should really get on with your life and do the things that matter to you. I don't know why November. Sheesh!
For better explanations, go to their site at www.nanowrimo.org.
I think I am participating this year. I’m six days behind schedule and I hyperventilate when I think about the things that will be happening in my life in the coming weeks, but maybe it’s not too late to be an optimist. Either that or I’m setting myself up to be a victim again.
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At present, I am practising a new style of writing and I am determined that the current weblog entry be written in a manner that maximises the size of my words and the length of my sentences – so that my inadequacies (none of which are physical, before you enquire) may be compensated for. It aggrieves me to reflect on the pathetic state of my writing style which has been left behind by current writing trends at least in one dimension - that is to say the dimension of length.
The realisation of my paucity in this area transpired last night when I was engaged in an activity I have recently been reacquainted with, which is the perusal of the email pontifications between members of the Word Up mailing list. The list consists of writers, journalists and other people involved in the formulation and apportioning of content, largely English. I was unable to follow the import of numerous words employed by these paid practitioners of the art. I was appalled at the new circumstance in which I found myself. I had the sense that my limited vocabulary had, unbeknownst to me, been repudiated by the language itself. My mind was discombobulated by burning questions. When did this preoccupation with voluminosity exert its dominance? Had the language I thought I loved transmogrified into a new monstrosity I can no longer recognise? Have I become an anachronism? What was an anachronism? Was my complacency precipitated by ethnocentrism, egocentrism or even narcissism? I remember having been informed that it was poor form to use large words in place of diminutive ones but I have no recollection of the rationalisations that elucidate such a practice now. Perhaps there really has been a paradigm shift and the old rationalisations are no longer applicable to the current context. It seemed inexplicable but the evidence was incontrovertible. The entire …thing, for lack of a better word…still seems like a prodigiously misanthropic joke.
It was, and to some extent still is, a harrowing experience but I told myself it was not the time for hysterics. Somebody had to be emphatic and there was nobody else in close proximity. From that moment on, I held fast to my sanguinity and devised a plan. The basis of the plan was the presupposition that if I could just alter my means of word selection, a different arrangement of sentences would follow and would eventuate in a style of writing which should, I was inclined to conjecture, catch up with the rest of the English-speaking macrocosm.
To this end, I have allowed the thesaurus to select the words that constitute today’s weblog entry. Thank you for your equanimity.
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Guess what!
It’s day 3 and I’ve run out of material. I know, I know. Blogging isn’t about constantly coming up with the good stuff in neat coherent daily entries. Part of the beauty I was told was that it’s supposed to be pretty free-flow writing and I’m trying hard to get the hang of it but … hey I have a confession to make…. It took me 3 tries to write that last sentence. Well, it’s more or less 3 tries, I wrote it, backspaced over it, rewrote the last half, backspaced over it again, undid the backspace, changed the words around (originally called it free-form, then looked it up on Google and decided free flow writing is more what I am looking for), and now we’re here, wherever here is.
Okay, free flow, free flow…. Be the thoughts… be the thoughts… what I’m thinking is I have a fear of this free flow thing because I am afraid that I will get to like it and start writing everything like this and then … gosh, I did it again, I just backspaced over that whole paragraph… okay okay, no more backspace key for me… Only move forward the rest of the blog… good.
As I was saying, I have a fear that I will start writing badly because oops no backspace so because I think I used to write good, write well, write g, write well and I think and it takes me a whole day to come up with the end product of a few hundred words, and that’s really not the final draft. In fact, here’s another confession, no wait, there’s a few, no backspace, so which to tell first, almost told the wrong one first, no wait, what are they okay. Confession one – I write everything in the word processor first and then cut and paste it into the blog editor. Okay no big deal, lots of people do that. Confession two, gosh it is a day for confessions, by the way since I, no wait now’s not the time, or well, by the way I am starting to get the urge to blog about my wife, I mean bitch about my wife, no wait that sounds bad, oh god my sentences are running into each other. New sentence. I didn’t mean I like bitching about my wife. I’ll explain that another day. She’s really nice but I see her everyday and I don’t see other people so much so she’s my main victim. Oh ya, confession two is it is really hard for me to blog because whatever I write, no matter how good it looks to me when I write it, it will look bad when I read it again the next day. Bad. Okay blog is good. I need blog. Blog is my friend.
My other thoughts. Today is kitchen renovation day. Don’t get me started on that. I… you know what, let’s talk about something positive instead. No, lets talk about the kitchen. No, lets talk about the clutter in our house caused by the kitchen renovation, but then its not really the renovation, it’s us. There’s a corny analogy in here somewhere but let me oh dammit, I’m going to need the backspace key for this one, sorry.
Okay it’s like this. We’re renovating our kitchen and I’m sitting here in my living room amongs pots, pans, plates, cups, saucers, teapots, utensils, appliances, serving trays, plastic containers, vases, recycled paperbags and a few unexplainable rolls of wallpaper – among other things I don't recognise. I have no idea how we’re going to ever get this back into the kitchen cabinets. First of all, it’s definitely not even possible because we have now added an oven and there’s considerably less storage space. Some of this stuff has got to go. And getting rid of things would definitely be a step in the right direction.
What I am saying is, there is too much clutter in the house. The things we keep that we don’t use seem to do nothing but make us feel guilty so I don’t see why we should hang on to them. Why did we get them in the first place? I don’t know. It seemed like a good idea at the time. People are like that you know - we like to get things we don’t have. Right now, I don’t have a lot of space and I’d like to get some back.
I’m not just talking about physical space and material things. We complicate our own lives in ways that doesn’t seem logical. We get bored and try to kill time with activities that we enjoy only marginally more than just standing still, and then we complain that we have no time left to do great things, so we buy time and convenience by paying for expensive parking and buying faster computers and eating junk food. There’s just something a little funny about this whole life in the city business. Okay, let’s do one blog entry at a time and save that for another day.
For today, this is the direction we are heading – a little less clutter in the house and a little less clutter in our lives. More space and time and clarity of thought and more freedom to do the things that we really need and want.
Okay, I admit it. In a way, I really am bitching about my wife because most of these things on the living room floor are hers. I mean they are shared by the both of us but if you really put everything between us and drew a line between the things that are of more nostalgic value to her than it is to me and vice versa, I think the line will end somewhere near my toes. Sorry, baby. It’s not that I want to get rid of everything. We can still have clutter. I just thought it’d be nice to have a manageable clutter – one that we can take out and wipe and rearrange and put back neatly into place, - like the nice little sentences and paragraphs that fit into a proper blog entry, written with the full use of the keyboard.
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1. If you are not already in a debate, join or start one. Join a forum and find a thread or a post to argue on. The person who put up that thread or post is hereinafter to be referred to as your opponent.
2. Dismantle your opponent’s arguments into small chunks and look for faults in the literal meanings of his words. If none are found there, make creative use of analogies to belittle his claims -”Saying blank is blank is like saying blah is blah.” (For best effect, keep “blank is blank” as direct quotes and make “blah is blah” as ridiculous a proposition as possible). In a worst case scenario, if your opponent seems to have said something that seems to be irrefutably true, do not be disheartened, but start your next argument with “That depends on how you define…” followed by something they said which is impossible to define without being accused of being a racist, sexist or extremist.
3. Each side of a good debate will have its own share of difficult issues so when your opponent brings these up, never be duped into addressing them. Instead, bring up some of your own impossible issues for them to resolve. When you are really pushed to answer, claim that you are too busy to dignify simple questions with answers because these issues have already been discussed to death all over the internet and mention something about the poor education system of today producing spoon-fed automatons.
4. Group your opponents into large collectives and give them names (for e.g. “the anti-war camp”, “pro-war people”, “the opposition”, “the media”, “abortionists”). Then whenever necessary, you can bring up the less intelligent quotes previously made by other members of their group to re-refute.
5. Seriously consider ending each post with a wise or wise-sounding saying. A direct quote from a famous dead person is good, but one made up on the spot is now widely acceptable too. Ones that rhyme are effective, but much more popular now are the ones that go forwards and backwards (for e.g. “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”). It also helps if the phrase contains a humourous pun because humour is often confused with the truth.
6. If all else fails, use the TINROWA (There-Is-No-Right-Or-Wrong-Answer) defense – useful when you are just starting to lose the argument and right before you shift the focus to another internet thread. Assert that whatever you said is just your opinion and that everybody is entitled to one and make yourself magnanimous by being the first to suggest both parties agree to disagree but at the same time, try to find a way to accuse your opponent of suppressing your rights to expression. Useful words to include are censor, dictatorship and Hitler.
I hope you find this guide useful and enjoy your ability to appear clever to a whole new group of people you might never meet.
- Sim Tong
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That’s a good question. I was always a little wary about starting a blog. I didn’t want to write about my mundane everyday life. I thought maybe we should just write about current events and things of interest to a wider group of readers– sort of put a little distance between ourselves and the blog – but I didn’t want to turn back into a guy with opinions on everything, however uninformed. Also I didn’t want to turn into one of those angry people who saw faults in everything so they would have something to complain about online. That is why I thought maybe I should not update the blog daily but only when there really is something good to say. Of course, the trouble with that is I might stop blogging after the first day, and I didn’t want to turn into one of the people who did that either.
See Ming always had the idea that we shouldn’t be censoring our writings because it would mean censoring our thoughts. I’m not sure how far I can take this idea because if I really let loose all the random things that crept into my head, my friends and family will start reading meanings into everything and I shall instantly be diagnosed as petty, selfish, uncaring, conceited, deceitful, unfaithful and a number of other things I’d like to avoid being called.
Oh Great! I seem to have turned into one of those guys who never start anything because they’re always in the planning stage.
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