Despite the best efforts of the local spider population to reduce me to a sobbing, shrieking wreck, lately I have been a mood that could actually pass for relative contentment if you hold it at arm's length and squint a bit.
And in the gap left by the very slight shrinking of my October-related anxiety, November has decided to vie for a little attention, too.
Firstly, NaNoWriMo. Which is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, in fact.
For one thing, I need to start putting together an idea
now before October arrives and keeps me too busy to think about novelling. I'm feeling a little out of interesting ideas right now, and am almost tempted to retry Heaven Sent (my poor neglected black comedy-ish story that never got beyond a single short chapter) as my novel for this year, but recycling an old idea isn't entirely in the spirit of NaNo, is it? I need some inspiration and I need it soon.
For another thing, this will be my fourth year participating in NaNo. I kinda wish I could have been a part of it since the beginning (although a 50000 word novel at eight years old would have been some feat to achieve). It is awesome. It is light-hearted, motivational, creative fun and I now happily hold November as practically sacred novel-writing time. I love NaNoWriMo and everything it stands for.
Which is why I'd like to
give a little back this year in the form of a donation and maybe grabbing a t-shirt or poster. I'd love to give a
big donation, but having no income of my own yet means that I couldn't really afford to. Still, I figure if I eat cheap instant noodles now and then (or whatever is a step down from what I'll be living off most of the time at uni), Gumshoe-style, I can save a small amount every week. A little under five pounds a week for a year would total £250 saved, which should roughly equate to $500, which is
this. (I'd like to donate
this year, though, so I'd probably be eating the noodles retrospectively.)
Maybe I am being just slightly mad, but that seems to be in the spirit of NaNoWriMo as well. And the instant noodles.
Now, secondly... World of Warcraft. My subscription ran out some time ago, and I promised my guildies that I would be back before the year was out. I missed my chance at the very beginning of September (the latest I could possibly get two more months without it interfering with NaNo), so that puts my next opportunity at the beginning of December.
Problem? Wrath of the Lich King, the upcoming expansion. The release date has been announced, and it is the 13th of November,
smack dab in the middle of NaNo. All my happy ideas of levelling to 80 with my guildies, discovering all the new content alongside them and (most of) the rest of the world, and staying on the glorious crest of the Warcraft wave for once... all dashed unless I am willing to sacrifice this year's NaNoWriMo*.
And you know what? I'm not. Northrend can wait 17 days; my November is set aside for literary adventures only, and those fifty thousand words aren't going to write themselves.
I'll can put aside the price of the two-month game time card that I could have bought any time between the end of my last subscription and November 13th and it can go towards my NaNo donation. That's at least an
Extraordinary Helper donation right there. Roughly a whole month of retrospective noodle-eating!
I feel better about myself already. :D
(But I think you all know what I'll be doing when December rolls round. :P)
*
Or unless I can write 4166.6 words per day for the first twelve days of November and finish more than half a month early. Hahahah. Not that I won't fiercely attempt to do so given the Warcrafty incentive and adequate caffeine, but really now.
