November has sneaked up and closed the curtains. The clocks have changed, but the evenings are still drawing in. Halloween has been and gone and bonfire night too and that’s just in the first week. All a bit spooky and dark and fitting then that 7 November is the birth date of Albert Camus (1913-1960) philosopher, journalist and writer of L’Étranger, often translated as The Outsider (1942). He also wrote other novels, short stories and non-fiction. He was famous for his theories on the Absurdist School of Thought and stated that ‘individuals should embrace the absurd condition of human existence while also defiantly continuing to explore and search for meaning’. More on Camus here: http://www.iep.utm.edu/camus/
As most writers will know, November is also National Novel Writing Month or ‘NaNoWrimo’. I always forget the acronym, which isn’t a good start if you’re hoping to actually do the challenge, and it is a challenge! The idea is that you write around 50,000 words in the month of November, which translates as writing quite a lot of words every day (almost a couple of thousand). Or doing what I would do, which would be prevaricating for the first three weeks and then trying to catch up. But that’s just me, LOTS of people love nanowrimo and say that even if the final result is a massive editing challenge, it makes you focus on just writing, which is what every writer should try to do. So good luck to all you nanowrimoers (made up word?). If anyone wants to know more look at the official website: http://nanowrimo.org/
Recognising that I will not be doing the Nanowrimo challenge this year, I am focussing instead on sending out short stories, finding fun little competitions like ‘Less than 100 words’ which is online at http://www.lessthan100words.com/, doing research for my novel and connecting with local writers, like those at the wonderful Norwich Writers’ Circle https://norwichwriters.wordpress.com/
I also received today the latest issue of ‘Short fiction journal’ http://www.shortfictionjournal.co.uk/ This is a high quality publication in association with Plymouth University. Full of short stories, translations and art and published every autumn. Submissions are open now until December 31st, details on their website.
If you have also decided not to do nanowrimo but still want to get that novel written you could turn any month into an ‘every day is a writing day’ month (absurdist acronym still to be decided) and there are website communities available that fit this need. Personally, I am quite tempted by this one: http://750words.com/ It’s online and private, so not open to the general public, but it still allows you to track how well you’re doing with your word counts.
yasminwrites.com 