One Months' Time

At the time of writing this it has just gone 11pm. During any other evening I would be winding down for the night, preparing to get some shut-eye. Right now, however, I feel the need to tap-tap-tap away and write a couple of things that have flitted through my thoughts. What better place than on this blog, hmm? I knew there was a reason I created this thing, even though it has been somewhat neglected as of late.

An interesting month is fast approaching, one that I have been considering for the last few days. More on that in a second. Let me build up to it first. Recently my free time has been rather lacklustre; my reading has slowed down, my writing has atrophied and most of what little time I have in the evenings is spent slumped in a chair, chocolates within easy reach with one hand and endless mugs of coffee in the other (for, as you should know by now, everything in my life somehow relates to coffee) and numbing my mind with the second series of Arrow. Which is awesome, by the way. Nothing wrong with watching Arrow. To tell the truth, I switched over to it a few months ago so that I could laugh at how awful I thought it would be, how terrible and cheesey and something else worth writing in Italics. Turns out it was a lot of fun to watch, so much so that I have sat through both series' so far and feel a bit giddy that the third series starts in a few days. How to make a crime-fighting comic book vigilante even more awesome? Give him a bow

The point I'm trying to make is that I don't do much during my free time. I'm bored. I haven't written as much as I'd like. Most of what has been put down on paper has turned out to be nothing more than a pile of pretentious shit. Not just pretentious: pseudo-pretentious! I don't even know what that means, but it sounds appropriate. What I need is a project that I can really sink my teeth into, something that will inspire me and, I can't stress this enough, to not take myself too seriously and instead have some fun. If I'm not enjoying what I write then how can I assume  anyone reading it would feel any different?

My biggest problem - other than impatience - is that I often feel that I need a deadline, a cut-off point, an imposed limitation that will spur me on to focus more than I normally would...

... which leads me to the so-called "interesting month" I mentioned earlier. I will give you a hint as to what it is:

NaNoWriMo

To the uninitiated, that would translate to National Novel Writing Month. A challenge to write 50,000 words starting from the November 1st and ending on November 30th. So far I'm still rather on the fence about it. Most of this evening has been spent jotting down a few disparate ideas, trying to gauge the kind of story I might like to write if I did decide to take part in the challenge, but so far I'm not sure. I suppose it would provide a deadline, even if it is the illusion of one, and it would give some purpose to this otherwise aimless blog. Plus it would be good to try talking with other members of the NaNoWriMo community and see what they are working on. Hmm...

One month to plan something, followed by one month to write a story roughly the size of The Great Gatsby...

How hard could it be...