NaNoWriMo: the writing dilemma

I haven't done Writing Wednesday for a long time for a simple reason: I haven't been doing much writing. It turns out that our summer (if I can be so bold as to call it that) sapped my mojo and it has been a struggle to kick it back into action. I can tell how drained I became as I was barely reading and that, I have to tell you, is practically a life crisis! I can't remember a time when I didn't love to lose myself in a book.

Yet I long to write. When we were canal boating back in May I spent hours at the tiller, chugging along the beautiful waterways, planning stories and phrases, plotting the outline to a chapter or coming up with the perfect description of the scenery I passed. As soon as I stopped: bam! It is gone! There may be some lessons to learn from this.

1  Always make notes as you think of ideas.
2  The pace of canal life is great for writing motivation.
3  Dry land is not so good.

Of course, the main factor is time. Work went a little crazy for a couple of months and my children are always a drain on resources. That is nothing compared to many writers, who scribble away at their masterpieces from the most time-pressured, child-infested lives possible. Perhaps I needed even more pressure in order to get going.

And so, I note that NaNoWriMo approaches. For those of you who are unaware of this phenomenon it is short for National Novel Writing Month - the month being November. The challenge is to write 50,000 words in 30 days. Now, I'll not go into the argument that 50,000 words does not constitute a novel, nor into the pros and cons of writing so intensively expecting publication by the end of December. No - instead I'll focus on the merits of getting into a writing habit. Or, in my case, back into it.

The challenge equates to 1,667 words per day (that allows me to stop at 1,657 on the last day - the mathematician within me insists on calculating, and saving, those extra 10 words). If I aimed for 2,000 every day that I could allow me 5 days off. Even if I achieved 1,000 per day I could be writing enough words to top up one of my partly written memoirs practically to book length. Then I could spend a happy Christmas editing (ahem!)

Can I do this to myself? More importantly, can I afford not to do this to myself? The challenge is out there. Perhaps I should just give it a whirl and see where I get.

Or else I should buy a narrowboat and become a hermit.

What do you think?

The problem with an excellent education

Many moons ago I had the privilege of studying O-level (that's to date me!) English Literature. I'm not sure the exam board were thinking totally straight when they chose the volumes to be read. I think their thinking went like this:

We need 5 books.


Poetry. Let's go classical and choose some narrative verse. Ah, here's a book [with extremely small print] that will do, choosing eight [lengthy] poems from it.


A classic novel. I know, we could choose Dickens or Austen, but lets go for something from the Brontë sisters [after all, we were in Yorkshire!] Jane Eyre? Wuthering Heights? Oh, nothing so classic or well known as that - let's set The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Ann Brontë .


Shakespeare. Of course we have to do one of his plays... but let's not choose anything obvious, such as Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth, The Tempest... oh no! Let's do a history play. Henry IV. Part I.

And the final two? Perhaps something more contemporary? Something that'll please a bunch of teenage boys? [I'm not sure it did, btw!] Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household: that's World War II based adventure.


And the final choice? Thomas Telford by LTC Rolt.


You may have spotted my cynicism slipping through my description of their choice. I may be the only person who got truly excited that Henry IV Part I was to be screened last Saturday night, only for the Wimbledon Men's Doubles to overtake it! But this last book really took the biscuit. It was the ultimate insult. For a teenager (particularly a girl?) this was the most boring book in the entire universe. It chronicled TT's life and engineering prowess: the Great Western train line, Ironbridge, the canals... in all their detail, with dimensions and structural information, and a splash of historical setting.

Five books that I have carried around with me ever since studying them, clogging up more removal vans than I can count.

Yet now, as I come to write about our canal holiday and the wonderful design of the Shropshire Union Canal, I'd like to have a flick through and learn a little more about the man who built it and the men who laboured at it. The canal largely avoided the need for locks by the creation of numerous embankments and cuttings, changing the landscape forever. Nowadays, covered with mature trees, you wouldn't know it had been anything different.

"Ah!" I think, "I have a book about that!"

Can't find it. Grrrrrr.

Photo credit:  Jeremy Irons and Tom Hiddleston in Henry IV: Part 1 Photo: BBC

And the answer is...

Here is a bigger clue to our recent holiday:

Two weeks on a canal boat, puttering around the Four Counties Ring. These photos were taken on the Shropshire Union Canal section, when we still had sunshine (even if we could hardly see it for the trees towering up the cuttings!) This was a particularly unusual, double-arched bridge.

Canal boating seems to bring up nothing but adventurous stories, which I hope to write up and regale you with over the coming weeks. Ironic how many stories there can be, given you slow down to 3mph!

Truly, for us, it was just what the doctor ordered, allowing us to sleep and rest, to talk (often without the children, as they played games together inside the boat) and to see some of the most beautiful countryside. The rain at the end of the second week put a dampener (ahem!) on things, making us all a little miserable as we battled with our 15th lock of the day...

I've asked the children if they'd like to go again. No response.
My husband and I? Back like a shot!
Does that reflect well or badly on our individual paces of life?

And, for the record, my son's response when asked what the best bit of the holiday was?

"Trying out two new types of Magnum ice-cream!"

We could have done that at home!