NaNoHellNo

Back When I Was Here Turn Down The Music and Read: Chapter...

NaNoHellNo

If you have the good fortune or bad luck of being related to a writer, you may already be aware that November is NaNoWriMo. It stands for National Novel Writing Month and is meant to get novels that are but a glimmer in the eye of their creators onto the page and into the world. Participants are encouraged, goaded, cheered, and guilted into producing 50,000 words in 30 days.

Every year there are a few high profile success stories, of books that started of as NaNoWriMo projects and now coming to store shelves and Kindles near you. It’s exciting, the promise of so many words pouring out of your fingertips in such a concentrated span of time. You can expect every coffee shop you love to be overrun by sweaty, nervous looking people on laptops who are obsessively monitoring the word count indicator in the lower left hand corner of their screen. More overrun than normal, anyway.

I am not made of the stuff to survive NaNoWriMo. I tried it once and made it to November 3rd. My writing productivity, it turns out, does not respond well to arbitrary word counts and forced calendar marches. The times I’m most productive are when I sidle up to my laptop and pretend I’m not paying any attention to it. There’s a British phrase for it: softly softly catchee monkey. If I look off into the distance like I’m just pondering the origin of softly softly catchee monkey, not opening a Word doc to type into or anything, and if don’t even look at what I’m typing on the screen – THAT’S when the word count explodes. Which I then have to meticulously proofread because I’m not actually so good at typing that I can stare into the distance and not spell everything wrngo.

Still, I have the deepest admiration for the word nerds out there making it happen this month. And I’d like some sense of accomplishment on the Monday after Thanksgiving. So, in solidarity with the NaNoWriMo’ers, I will be working hard this month on some initiatives of my own.

NaFreMoMo: National Fret More Month. I’m the mother of a high school senior applying to college. Fretting about what deadline is approaching in the application calendar, how to communicate that in a non-pressuring way, and whether we’re going to screw up some major piece of the college application process, like clicking the “State University” rather than the “University of” box or vice versa and thereby applying to an entirely different school, is what gets me out of bed in the morning. I’m going to double down on anxiety for November!

NaMuMemReMo: National Music Memoir Reading Month. Have you seen how many new music memoirs have come out in the past month or two? Chrissie Hynde, Carrie Brownstein, Elvis Costello, Grace Jones, Bernard Sumner. And I’ve yet to finish any of them. Please god do not let any musician get inspired by NaNoWriMo.

NaOakPrecipWaMo – National Oakland Precipitation Watch Month. The weather forecasters keep telling us El Nino’s going to blow through town soon and give us the deluge we’ve been waiting for after four years of NorCal drought. I’ll do my part by obsessively watching the Oakland precipitation totals for the year starting July 1 on the SFChronicle website – updated every day at 1 pm. I’ve got a 100% record of daily participation so far! (0.56 inches as of Tuesday morning, in case you care.)

NaOverMePlaMo – National Overreach Menu Planning Month. I see you, Holiday Recipes and Cooking Light and Bon Appetit at the checkout stand, beckoning me with your glistening turkeys and your carmelized Brussels sprouts and your cakes baked in the shape of the Mayflower. You and I both know that on Thanksgiving Day, I’ll be bringing a bottle of wine and a pumpkin pie from the bakery to take to my friend’s house for dinner. But, I think as I throw one of you onto the conveyor belt holding my ice cream and beer (see NaFreMoMo,) it wouldn’t be November if I wasn’t setting myself up for dashed culinary dreams.

NaWhoXmasThisYearMo – National Who Do I Have for Christmas This Year Month. November marks the traditional start of the phone call tree in which my brother, sister, and I try to remember who has whom for the annual gift exchange – back when our kids were little, we decided we’d trade off gift giving for the grown-ups each year. So if I give a gift to my brother, he gives one to my sister, and she gives one to me, and then the next year we switch. It works well except no one can ever remember what they gave or got the year before, and we have to do present forensics. “What year did you give me the cribbage board? Did I give you the mixing bowls in 2013 or 2014? Does anyone remember who gave me the fireplace screen? ” The mental strain is such that this may be the year we go back to buying gifts for everyone.

NaDaCraiDrooMo – National Daniel Craig Drool Month. Spectre opens this Friday. Enough said.

So: what do YOU plan to do every day between now and November 30th? I’m gonna send out a worldwide hoodoo that you succeed in your challenge.

***Just found out I was chosen to read at the next Basement Series, a quarterly reading series that’s a fundraiser for Litcamp scholarships! Join us on Friday Nov 13th at 7 pm the Sports Basement on Bryant Street for a night of readings on The Sporting Life.