This year Christmas is being delivered by The Internets.

Things that have occured since thus far this month:

• I won NaNoWriMo by reaching 50k (over 55 actually) even though novel is not actually completed to date. I have a hold on most (alas, not all) of the threads of the story, but they are currently jumbled in two separate tangles which will not meet neatly in the middle leaving a huge, gaping hole in the crux of the tale.

Which would be easier to draft around (in the messy, first-drafty, scrawly fashion of the manuscript) if it were not for point the second:

• I developed a shockingly dreadful cold with associated chest infection which has been dogging my every breath for two weeks and promises to do so for another week or so.

For a good ten days of this I haven't been able to write; I have never been that ill before. I simply could not relate one sentence to another and keep a coherant narrative. I am now mostly able to string sentences into sensible paragraphs but consistent story threads are another case entirely.

Mostly I have:

• Spent my down time on the sofa, under a duvet, catching up on missed television and eating cheese.

I wish I was joking as the closest I have come to festive so far this December are the Christmas specials for Studio 60 & Boston Legal. For Christmas I would like a new immune system; my current one appears to have left for the holidays.

Unfortunate Keyboard Allergies Not Withstanding...

50k later and I win, although the story is far from over.

At least it's more extensive as a first draft than as an outline (and, as that only existed in my head, a lot more reliable!)

Of course, reaching 50k and the end of the month has left my motivation beaten and cowering in a corner - hit a bit of a slump in the previous week in actually transferring ideas to ink (and the keyboard is almost entirely out of the picture for now).

However I have fallen in love with the Kingsway Tramway Subway and suspect that it might well have been created for me, personally.

All my other words have been eaten by NaNo; I've got nothing.

Caffeinated Ink

There's a coffee place at Seven Dials that almost always has a queue out the door. Today I was in a bit later and the queue was managable so I ducked in for a lovely, but ridiculously tiny, latte and almond croissant to go.

Will definitely be doing again, but may well specify adult-size coffee next time because the amount of caffeine was woefully insufficient to keep me upright at the moment.

NaNoWriMo is at 27758 and I am having difficulty thinking of any word other than those generally censored and now (distressingly!) also blurred by the BBC.

I mean REALLY having difficulty thinking of any other word; I pretty much take out my pen/keyboard and write with a constant stream of single curses rolling through my head. I cannot even summon energy for the interesting compound curse words. And they're my favourite.

Beginning and End are happily plotted and the former is satisfactorily drafted, the latter being plotted in full, neatly cross-referenced and conclusionary and complete save the prose. Whereas the middle and general crux of the story are wilfully absent from screen, paper and mind and causing ever more distress.

Inconveniently (but fabulously) busy this evening, am refusing to leave desk until I hit 30k (clearly, writing around other, more monetarily necessary, tasks).

And then I might remember how to breathe.

"Algebra is difficult, epistemology is difficult" - this is impossible.

Well I am definitely doing NaNoWriMo.

Not quite sure how this happened and, quite frankly, past the halfway point with only 21k I am not quite sure why it continues to happen. I do not have a novel, not even a NaNovel. I have a series of scenes and an obligatory death. Two in fact. And a monster.

Am contemplating having the monster eat everyone in 50 words or less and calling it a day.

(Rocks fall; everyone dies)

Utterly disheartened by the world right now. Putting the 21k of pain aside I am completely snowed under with the day job, doing "non-existant" administrative work; that wonderful snowballing kind where taking care of one matter causes five more to appear from the woodwork.

And I have a two page article about my department how it fits into the grand scheme of things. Which is wonderful as my department no longer, technically, exists. In the same way as the administrative work no longer, technically, exists. Very much present and active and yet officially nothing.

(I see dead administrators, walking around like regular administrators; they don't know their department is dead.)

My fingers are blue, partly because there is no heating in my office but mostly because, instead of my lovely, mess-free Lamy, I decided to use my favourite calligraphy ink in a nameless bulb-fill fountain pen (because the ink is gorgeous, but thick and would gunk up my Lamy in seconds). Have scrubbed hands under the hot tap but it's stained my cuticles and looks as if I have repeatedly slammed my fingertips in a door hinge.

I suppose it could be worse; I could have actually slammed my fingertips in a door hinge, but I am having a bad day and finding the silver lining in the storm doesn't appeal very much right now.

Commuting is the New Damnation

Southeastern Trains are enough to make angels fall from grace.

And, after this morning's fraud of a commute, I now have 3k exploring this theory instead of working on Disbodied V, or even the new and utterly inexplicable NaNo-ISaidNo!-WriMo project with the working title of: PSA.

(6 hours and 3k of sacriliage and nothing happened in quite the way it was supposed to.)

This is because I lack discipline in any way, shape or form.

Just saying.

Also on the subject:
Mornington Crescent: 1
Research: 0

Oh, I am so predictable that it hurts.

NaNoNotWriMo

I am expressly not NaNoWriMoing. I am, infact, NaNoNotWriMoing.

Therefore if someone could explain why I have 5k of an entirely new project currently sitting in a notebook in my satchel, that would be awfully helpful. Especially since since, to write more than 5k, and this will cause some problems.

Problem singular in honesty, as my issue with research is pretty much uni-fold: I am not very good at it.

Oh I find out the information I need. I also find out a multitude of minutia, such as the melting point of Boron (2076ºC), the diameter of the largest Catherine Wheel firework (85ft), that the motto of Żebbuġ, Malta is 'Semper Virens' - Żebbuġ itself being twinned with the Sicilian town of Agìra and that I could read about Carl Linnaeus for hours and all the time be convinced that I was making progress.

This weekend my jumping off points are to include: Brothers Grimm/Hänsel & Gretel, Theseus, King of Athens and the history of the London Underground.

This will likely devolve very quickly indeed into gingerbread recipes, thread counts for bedsheets and challenging people to impromptu rounds of Mornington Crescent.

Barack Obama, President-Elect.

I have been trying for hours to put feelings into words and failing epically - a fact that distresses me greatly, and would distress me more were it not be for that, you know, that feeling, oh, what's the word... The opposite of that sinking, despairing, nebulous fear that was the end of the last American Election.

Oh yes: hope.

I grinned like a loon all morning. While I hate that turn of phrase, it's really the only appropriate description. I am one stranger short of being sectioned. In fairness: merriment of any form on a commuter train is enough to make you an oddity.

Went to Giraffe for lunch with the fabulous Greg and Heike where I had celebratory pancakes and a celebratory glass of fizzy champagne Diet Coke (work ruins everything).

I cannot imagine what the atmosphere is like in (Liberal And Therefore Fake) America right now. Even in London there's a vague sense of well-being and general satisfaction. Every time someone passes me with a newspaper it will prompt a smile; when others do the same it prompts a smile. Catching people returning these smiles, prompts a smile. It's all very British, very reserved, quiet approval.

No, in the UK we did not have a vote. It was not our election, which is why it's not self-satisfaction. It's a gentle pride, vindication if you will, because America; you did it.

And if I may add, without sounding unduly patronising? We knew you could.

What's Next?

As of this moment I have finished the evening and weekend work, the period otherwise known as 'how many hours can I put in within a week without sudden and inevitable death?' Not so much additional employment as some kind of twisted endurance challenge.

I should have been working tomorrow evening as well; instead I shall be in Manchester, returning to London first thing Thursday and heading straight into the office. Then I am out Thursday and Friday evenings until late.

This weekend I am doing nothing. If possible I will not even leave the house.

I am not yet convinced that I will manage to leave the bed.

Sleep - Coma - Death?

I am not a morning person at the best of times, but currently waking up is somewhat similar to a near death experience, in that it feels like I am very nearly experiencing death.

This is, admittedly, pretty much my own fault. For the entirety of October I am working evenings as well as daytimes, partly because the day job doesn't quite manage to suck all the soul from my life but mostly because - while I don't have any particular attachment to money in itself - I am rather fond of exchanging it for goods and services and I do have a rather all-consuming addiction to notebooks and also inks.

Yesterday I was in the office until 5pm, then I took the 17.46 train home. I got in at about 18.25, then left five minutes later for Workday Part II (The Monotonous Edition). I got back at 9pm, at which point I had food and then did evening-job-related paperwork. I did a lot of paperwork. I did paperwork until two in the morning.

Tonight I will likely be doing, roughly the same, but - hopefully - with significantly less paperwork and then, if at all possible, I will not be out on Thursday because I worry how near one must become before that 'near death experience' becomes simply a 'death experience'.

Which is, in all, a roundabout explanation for my lack of productivity in any fashion, making this a placeholder post to say: rumours of my death have been ... entirely understandable.

Fajitas in Fiji

I have been trying to write a gap-filler scene all weekend, initially because it needed to be written, now because it refuses to be written and I am taking a stand.

And that determination is, unfortunately, where things come crashing to a horrible end.

It's not a 'block' per se, I can force the words onto screen or paper, scrawling them out in the hope that something useful can be salvaged from the catastrophe of nouns, verbs, adjectives and other collateral damage, but it doesn't seem to be working. So I try slowing and hoping for some intervention of inspiration.

This mostly results in my staring at the screen, little finger pressing down the shift button to start my next sentence, while I tap lightly against F and J on the keyboard, in case sudden inspiration flashes past and I have to touch-type it down quickly before it escapes.

FJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJF

Twenty minutes later and I have a page of 'f' followed by 'j' which, whilst making a satisfying clatter at the time of typing, is somewhat disappointing to redraft.

BUT if inspiration does appear I am ready. my left pointer finger is on F and my right is on J and this actually does mean that, ergonomically, my fingers are ready for anything that can be thrown at them.

FJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJF

This is theory is, of course, total bollocks and mostly results in my trying to work out words with both 'f' and 'j' in. Spicy words mainly, like 'fajita' or 'jalfrezi'.

This is likely because it is coming up to lunch.

FJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJF

There's also 'jiffy' and 'jeff', and there's 'Jif' bathroom cleaner, but they've rebranded that as 'Cif' now and so it no longer meets the requirements.

Although 'Jif Lemon' juice still exists, so perhaps that counts instead?

FJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJF

To get back to food, there's FRijj milkshakes and Jaffa Cakes (should that be one word or two?), both of which are brand names and thus completely useless in Scrabble, as are Fujifilm and Fujitsu.

FJFJFJFJFJFJFJF

Fiji.

FJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJF

The problem I have, one of the many problems I have, is that the reason I skipped this scene, was that I couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t trite and/or uninspired, and I still have no idea how to bridge the written scenes. I just can’t get from 'A' to 'B'. (At least if I was going from 'A' to Z' I'd be two letters down already (namely 'f' and 'j') and only have 12/13ths remaining.)

As it is, all I can assume is that I am not starting with either F or J, mostly because if anything began with F or J I would have reached it already.

Maybe I’ll switch fingers and practice ‘d’ and ‘k’ a while. Perhaps that was where I was going wrong all along?

DKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKD...

Aiming for Mediocrity

"I am a robot from the future," said the robot from the future, who was from the future.

Read an article in this month's Writing Magazine - I've slept since then and so can recall neither its title nor its author - which provided tips for beating writer's block (if you are so inclined to confess its existence, and there are many, I know, who don't).

One of these tips was to write, but to write badly. To create absolute dross for a sustained four or five pages. To write as badly as manageable and to take pleasure in the creation of the worst possible prose.

The thought intrigued me so I noted it on a mental 3x5 and intended to pull it out at some point anon.

'Some point anon' turns out to be every time I sit down to write. I sit at the keyboard, fully intending to straighten out, for example, the horrible heaving mass that comprises chapters five through seven of 'Disbodied V', yet in my mind I am composing sentences that would likely be classed under 'torture' by most reasonable beings (and 'enhanced interrogation' by all others).

This inclination shows no sign of weakening, it's getting to the point where I think I'm going to have to sit and write four to five pages of, say, the robots from the future (who are from the future) and work through my sudden sadistic inclinations, otherwise I may well see my desire to write bad prose leak out when I really don't mean it to.

(It could be argued that this? Has already happened).

A Strange Kind Of Christening

That is at least, a Christening more than a post, but I will post something now simply to kick start things. I have a horrible habit of making a decision and getting part way though before -

- Oh look, a shiny thing -

- Exactly.

However with this post I have inked the proverbial page and so it is time to launch the eponymous Digital Tipp-Ex.

Good luck blog!