Remember Remember, the Joys of November

Excuse the sneaky little V for Vendetta reference there, it just had to happen ok? Well today is December 3rd and it's time for me to look back on my favourite month. This hasn't always been this way, I still remember 2010, which was horrible. Ever since then though, every November is just predestined to be awesome

The first thing shouldn't be a novelty on this side. Since 2011, November is my favourite month cause of NaNoWriMo. Yes, December is cool cause of Christmas, and in March is my birthday, but the month long joy/stress/awesomeness of writing a novel isn't to be topped by anything else, sorry. This year was stressful in many ways. I wasn't sure about participating due to an absolute lack of plot. At the start of October I didn't feel like I was prepared at all. Then the month went on and still, absolute blankness in my head. A couple of days before NaNo started I went back to the forums, just to be sucked into the crazy once more. It's hard to quit when you see others getting prepared. On the 31th October I had this rough idea of a girl on a zeppelin, on the way to the colonies. Kind of steam-punk, also maybe including the early history of New Orleans and the Casquette-Girls. Instead of plotting more, I drew the characters, so when the hour struck, I was absolutely helpless, but still ready to fight.

I might not be very good at drawing, but I enjoyed this for sure

I set myself many different goals through the month. One was as always to win by the 15th, so I could do Uni stuff that I was required to do during the second half. As most of my plans, that didn't work out. It wasn't helpful that I do have a demanding social live, a conference at my church on the second weekend, a weekend-long trip to Germany during the third  and work and a housewarming party on the fourth, plus two papers due on the fifth. Throughout the week I had to go to classes obviously, also we had this project going on at work that had to be done by the and of November. No writing time there either. Oh, and may I add the time spend with friends chilling and the birthday surprise party we threw for the flatmate? The more I think of it the more astonished I get on how on earth I even considered winning it.

In addition to that, as ever year we had chat-rooms. Like last year my time was spend in two of them for the most. The swissnanos and the Burmingham-Westmidlands, as we made friends there last year. The good thing were the people who are all completely utterly bonkers.

The bad thing was, how to focus when there is so much funny things going on there too?In addition to a life at uni and a life at home, I also had to deal with an online life. That is lovely on the one hand side, but it is not helpful when trying to squeze words out of your brain. Though I have to add that I would've never made it to the finish-line without these nutters supporting me and cheering for me to keep going.

Jup you read it right. I did not make it by the 15th, but by 11 o'clock on the 30th November, I hit 50'000 words. The last weekend was the worst. I still was around 15 k away and I had two papers to hand in. That meant having to pull through two all-nighters, one keeping me up till 4 am, the other till 5 am. I can't speak for the quality of my papers, but they were handed in in time, which was all that mattered to me then. On Sunday, I broke my highest amount of words in a day, which now is 8,9 k. My computer crashed which almost lead to me losing more than 5k words (I was able to fix it and only lose 700, but those 5 mins where terrifying). Special thanks to two insomniacs at this point, it was an honour having you with me during those nights.


This year was my hardest battle for winning NaNo so far. I present to you the stats of someone, who really overestimated them self, but fought till the end. I might also add, that this is only the second year for me to win with working on one story only. One is allowed to work on multiple projects and add the words, but that is considered rebelling. So instead of winning on the 15th, I won without rebelling this year, which makes me proud too. My story is a mess and I'm not even anywhere near a good point to finish, but NaNo this year was a true blast. Thanks to the #swissingham people, you are crazy in the best ways. Thanks to the purple elephants, thanks to the Brummies and the Swissnanos.

Oh, and sorry for all the people that were cut short this month, or for everyone that had to work with me. It was not easy, I try to focus on real live this month though (and all the tests, yay) .

Once again, NaNoWriMo for me means being crazy. I have a lot of madness inside of me and I try to push it down for 335 day of the year, 30 days of just forgetting about that makes me feel the happiest I can be. Having a story that came in your mind last minute? No problem. A new character you never planned? Sure. Bloody vampires out of nowhere? What has to happen happens. Of course in that process I get sad and confused and frustrated, but once again, all I can say is that I love love love it and if you ask me, I would do it again in no time, cause it is simply worth it to me.

Well that was my November experience, stressful but worth it. Sometimes it is just really nice to have something you can always look forward to. Is there there something like that for you too?

Cheerio.

Oh the joys of November

Soon, very very soon it will be my favourite month again. It wasn't anything spectacular until the year 2011, but since then I can't help but be excited for it. I even remember that the year before November was especially rough as I had to go through a lot of personal struggles (including a broken heart, hard times at school and health issues). Luckily those are now all over and as I said, November turned out to be my favourite month despite the cold weather. I have already told you pieces of it, but today I hope you get the whole picture of the adventure called NaNoWriMo.

NaNoWriMo stands for national novel writing month, but in fact it should be called "international" by now, as there are people all over the world participating in it. When I first heard of it during summer 2011, I had no idea about the journey that it would take me on. I thought the idea was plain crazy, but I've never been very opposed to such things. I decided to make an account immediately. The goal of NaNo is to get people to write. We all know that first drafts are very rough; the plot holes might be as deep as Marianas Trench and the character are as flat as a lake on a day without wind. Whilst we are aware of that, we also know that without producing anything you cannot improve. If you do not write, how are you supposed to get the stories out of your head? That's quite hard. So during the thirty days of November a participant is obligated to write 50,000 words, which are approximately 1666 words a day. 

You can't win anything, except for the words you write and the knowledge that you did it. To be fair that is pretty amazing and it feels brilliant. On the other hand it is hard work. It means scheduling, maybe lack of sleep and less time with your friends. Writing has to be on your list of priorities along with school and those things. I usually cut down on facebook and the general not writing related internet then. During my first year I was a senior, participated in a musical and as I said I wrote a novel of 85,000. It was intense but so so good. I may have already told you, but before this experience I considered myself neither creative nor a writer. Nowadays those things are very important features to me so yeah, I'm glad I figured that out.

Looking back there was a huge chance of me just not attempting it the first year, even after signing up, but the forums kept my spirit up. In October I joined the purple elephants, a group initially formed to help out one guy with his girl problems that brought together a bunch of cool people from different places. I think they are in their fourth year by now and they are some of the rare threads that stay active all year round. Basically all of them are very dear to me and were there for me in times where I couldn't talk with anyone in real life and they are open minded and supportive and I really really love them. Without them the noveling experience would be half as enjoyable and as I said, they keep you motivated with their excitement.

Now I want to tell you more about the two stories I wrote and the one I'll be writing this year. NaNo '11 was a very important for me. I wrote the story called "truth is stranger than fiction" which basically was a novel consisting of stories that happened to me and my friends, in addition of a lot of fiction. Through this I was able to get past some things that were bothering me for years and I learned just how good of a therapy writing is. To this day it's the only story that found an end, even though I have not managed to do any editing yet. I'm not sure if I ever could do something with it because it's so personal.

Last year I did something entirely different. Based on a nightmare I once had I created a dystopian world in which there was a thing called "the ritual" in which kids become adults. That story was called "Toward the light - Dem Licht entgegen" The whole thing was supposed to be very psychological, the world building killed me though and that's the reason why I stopped right after November. I'm still very fond of the novel but right now it's just to time and energy consuming.

This year I'm back to my used field, I want to write another young adult /teen’s novel. The basic idea is stolen from a guy I know. He wants to do a volunteer year and before he leaves he wants to sell his phone and delete his facebook account. That somewhat made me think. I'm pretty often on facebook and even the idea of not having a phone feels pretty uncomfortable for me. All in all that plan inspired and fascinated me a lot and I decided to use it, even though I felt very awkward at first. I always do when I use things that happen around me for a story, but I work best when I have at least a rough idea of what I'm talking about. I have to stress the fact that except for the very basic idea, the rest is pure fiction. I always fear that people might get me wrong when I write romantically stuff that is roughly based on someone I know. I am a writer and creativity knows no boundaries. 

Of course the general idea is not that spectacular, so I had to add a pinch of drama, some romance and several unexpected happenings. I also wanted to challenge my writing skills somehow, so I gave the story a twist. I have two main character. There is Elis, the guy who leaves for South America, and there is Chloë, a girl who is still in school. They used to be friends but drifted apart somehow. Now she writes him a letter because she is angry about what he did. She does not expect him to answer, but he does. The whole story is supposed to be narrated through those letters. Nothing else, no more descriptions, just a whole bunch of letters.

It will be quite hard, as there are only that much you can include into a letter about for example how they look like and about the very obvious things that they've known for ages, but I will try my best to figure out a way. I'm so looking forward to where this story may lead me.

So I'm sorry if I bored you to death, but bare with me during this time. Or just leave if you don't care :P

Cheerio.

P.S. This post is scheduled as I'm in Germany right now, just thought I'd tell you.