Rhiannon Lives Here

Constantly hunting for my pen whenever I needed to jot something down in my pocket Moleskine was getting a bit old. Since the Moleskine hack community is no small potatoes, I figured someone would have figured out a way to attach the pen to the notebook that required ZERO points in the effort department.

Didn't take long to find one. Duct tape. Pure genius.

Doesn't look half bad, either.

And before anyone asks, yes, that is a knot in the elastic of my Moleskine. It decided to stretch like a lanky contortionist. I wasn't too happy (it's not like I found the notebook in the discount aisle at K-mart), but hell will freeze over before I go to any effort to replace the elastic. The knot does just fine.

       

Click here to download:

Moleskine_hack_success_The_Pen.zip (443 KB)

When I decided to participate in NaNoWriMo for 2009 - my very first one - it wasn't just because it sounded like an interesting and challenging experience. Well, there was that, too; I was intrigued by the idea of writing 50,000 words in 30 days as part of a large community of people doing the same thing. But what I mean is that I decided to use NaNoWriMo as a platform to aim for some very specific goals:

• Imposing self discipline. I wanted to form a daily writing habit, and discover how easy or difficult daily writing goals of this length would be for me.

• Writing a story sequentially, from beginning to end in order, instead of jumping around all over the place like I usually do.

• Suppressing my inner editor. I've developed a nasty habit of editing while I'm writing a first draft, which often stifles the creative flow and stops you from really just writing. NaNoWriMo was the perfect opportunity to force myself to just write, to just get the words on the page, and leave the editing until later.

• Improving my writing. The only way to do that is to actually write, right? Even if I didn't reach all my other goals, this is one goal I'd achieve just by doing it.

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25,003.

That's how many words I've written so far, in the space of thirteen days. Nice big, odd number, that. Three words over the half way point. Can't help but feel just a little bit of pride at getting this far with my first NaNoWriMo, and that's perfectly okay (and encouraged!) because anyone who's written any number of words this month deserves to feel proud of their achievement. For most of us, it's more than we would ordinarily write, myself included. Hell, it's more than many published authors write in that amount of time.

Tell you what, though: this experience has been pretty damn interesting. The week before NaNoWriMo started, I did a fair amount of planning. Outlines, character sheets, bits and pieces and scraps of notes, ideas that I thought I could use. I put them all down in my Scrivener document, ready and waiting for D-day. About ten days into it, I changed everything.

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Here's to a productive November! Yup, NaNoWriMo is just around the corner, and already my nails are getting shorter with the anticipation!

Nah, that's mostly a lie. I'm actually pretty excited about it. This will be my first ever NaNoWriMo, you see. I discovered its existence a few days before November last year, but the time just wasn't right and I didn't have any plans or outlines. But this year is a whole different story (though I did almost forget about it until the middle of October, but that's a... minor detail).

If none of this is making any sense to you, you might want to go here and read up on all this NaNoWriMo business. Otherwise, if you're lazy like me, I'll give you the nutshell version:

NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, and the goal is to write a 50,000-word novel during the month of November. Anyone can participate, writers and non-writers alike. This year, at the time of writing, there are already over 80,000 participants. There are no real prizes per se, but you'll have a written novel at the end of it. You don't even have to submit your novel or let anyone read a single page of it; you simply update your word count on the NaNoWriMo website.

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I live in a digital world, and that has never been more evident than right now. I wake up to a digital alarm and read my news online. I spend my day working on files stored digitally on my computer. I carry a digital device everywhere with me and use it for phone calls, internet, note-taking and games. For fun, I listen to digital music and watch digital TV and movies. I use a digital camera. Sometimes I even read digital books.

But there’s something I must confess; I’ve become so immersed in the convenience of the digital world that I’d forgotten all about the importance of doing something for the experience of it, rather than for the sake of saving time or for ease-of-use. I’ve become so dependent on my keyboard that I actually forgot what my handwriting looks like up until very recently when I purchased my first Moleskine notebook and put pen to paper for more than a few scribbled notes or a shopping list.

Growing up, I would take a notebook with me almost everywhere and write down everything that popped into my head; usually ideas for stories and poems, but sometimes just observations and questions that I had. It was a habit I enjoyed very much and one that I assumed I would carry into adulthood. I’m still not really sure when and why I dropped that habit, but the last notebook I’ve kept is from about three years ago with barely more than ten pages filled.

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