Last November I took part in a writing event that thousands of people across the globe were sharing in, NaNoWriMo. Every day I would sit down in front of my laptop in the small moments of free time I could find and spend as long as I could writing a story called Postcards. In the evenings this was often for as long as I could stay awake or could force my addled brain to work for.

Over the course of the month I saw my daily word update as a small graph on the NaNoWriMo word count, like a staircase leading up to some hidden prize. On days where I did no writing the staircase would stubbornly remain at the same level. On the days after this they would form a small cliff as my word count shot up due to my efforts at catching up.

After I watched the first of many pep talk videos posted on the NaNoWriMo website, I realised I had been pronouncing NaNoWriMo wrong; it wasn’t NaNoWreeMo after all. I spent the next week or so trying to

convince myself that everyone else in the world was wrong about this until I finally resigned myself to common sense. I still find myself pronouncing it NaNoWreeMo in my head, like those words we read in books that have their own pronunciation in our heads.

By the time the last day arrived I had scheduled my freelance work to allow myself a day off to catch up on the 3,600 words still left to do. I wrote the final words just before lunchtime, and then put the whole thing aside whilst the rest of life caught up with me.

It was a wonderful experience, especially the times when the story just seemed to write itself, the characters revealing more about themselves in the words that appeared on my screen. On those days where I found it hard to think of what to write or where the story was heading, well… I just wrote a crazy dream sequence, sometimes based on my own crazy dreams.

This weekend was the first time I had revisited what I had written and I found it rather encouraging. Some of the writing was of course very hurried but I had the bare bones of a story there, it was just that a lot of it just didn’t make sense. So, I sat down with a pen and paper and started working on a plan.

A couple of days later I now have more of an idea as to what on earth this novel is about. I know what significance the postcards in it have, although I can’t tell you that yet I’m slowly rewriting sections of it and adding new ones and have thought of some major plot changes that work much better. My aim is to eventually release it as some kind of companion to the album I’m working on of the same name.

It’s strange looking back as all this came about from my attempt at working through the Artists Way. It took me over a year and I still never got pass lesson 7, but it rekindled in me a desire for story writing. Something I used to be quite into but had just restricted to my song writing these past few years.

Here are a few of my NaNoWriMo tips:

• You’re doing this for yourself so don’t worry about following the rules and feel free to ignore the tips that follow this one if you feel like it.

• Try to write something everyday. The daily target is around 1600 words but even if you just manage a few sentences or a couple of hundred words you’re breaking the back of it a little.

• Do some practise writing before November. This will help with the next tip.

• Find a writing method that works best for you. I used a combination of Scrivener and pen and paper.

• Don’t worry about making a plan. I had a very loose outline at the start and just made up the plot as I went along. The end result was probably less well formed and structured than it would have been had I had made a plan but my aim was to just get some ideas down that I could work on afterwards.

• Don’t worry about both writing really good prose and finishing the story within the 50,000 words at the same time and within the month. I ended up with some sections being better written than others but I didn’t manage to finish the actual story within the 50,0000 words.

So, would I recommend taking part in NaNoWriMo? Of course. It’s a crazy idea and often those are the most fun and reap the greatest rewards. Hopefully, I’ll have finished rewriting my novel before this years November NaNoWriMo and the whole crazy episode starts all over again.

Edited with BlogPad Pro

Trains in India are long. So long in fact that it’s a shame they don’t use steam trains as a platform shrouded in steamy mist would look great for these massively long trains to slowly disappear into.

I’m used to long trains. We have them here in the UK too and it’s a groovy thing as you can fit many people on them, but there’s one subtle difference I wasn’t prepared for when I visited India a couple of years ago — you can’t just jump on any part of the train and walk down it as it’s moving to your carriage like you can here, so arriving late to the station means a frantic search for your carriage before the trains departs.

The Indian train system is one of the best in the world. It arrives on time, it’s cheap and it gets you from A to B when B is a long, long way away from A. It’s just the not being able to walk down the train bit that threw me a little, even though thinking about it now seems so obvious. Each carriage in an Indian train is like a little world of its own, cut off from its neighbour, a sort of microcosm of different classes and luggage deliveries. So, if you get on the wrong carriage when the train arrives, like I did, your only option unless you want to go all James Bondy on the roof is to run up and down the platform at the next stop, carrying all your luggage with you, hoping that you’ll get to your carriage before the train moves on again, which I didn’t…

What you should do…

Before I go into what happened to me, here is what you are supposed to do. Your ticket will say which carriage you are in and this usually is denoted by a combination of a letter and a number, e.g. Carriage 3c. To find that carriage, get to the platform early and look for signs usually situated above each platform indicating where each carriage will stop. Failing that just ask a train official as there’s usually one around. Once the train arrives and you’ve found your carriage have a quick glance at the passenger list stuck to the outside of each carriage to make sure your name is on there. It’s a simple and effective system.

and what I did…

Now, here is what I did. I was waiting somewhere around the middle of the platform when this massively long train arrives. I look at the numbers printed on the sides of each carriage and slowly realise they bear no relation whatsoever to the carriage number on my ticket. I have no idea where my carriage is or how to find it. The train is about to pull away so I just get on and spend the next 30mins or so standing in a corridor place between two carriages chatting to a couple of other guys who had presumably done the same as me, or had no seats booked at all. This was fine and I would have been happy to stay there except it was an 8 hour overnight journey and I had treated myself to a bed in first class, this being my first train journey on my own in India.

The ticket inspector comes along and kindly reminds me that I’m not in the right part of the train and that I should run towards the rear of the train at the next stop where, he says I’ll find the first class carriage. So, the train pulls in, I jump off and run as fast as I can towards the rear of this seemingly never ending train. I have a massive backpack on my back and a guitar case in one hand, leaving my other hand to grab at the air in front of me in an attempt to gain more forwards momentum as I run. Exhausted, I finally reach the rear of the train, but there’s no first class carriage here and the train is starting to pull away. Out of desperation I hurl myself towards an open doorway.

“I must get on this train”, I say to the slightly bewildered man standing just inside as I throw my guitar case on. I jump, I slip and I find myself with the top half of me on the train but my legs dangling down between the side of this moving train and the platform, my tired arms desperately trying to haul myself up.

Then, at the point where my mind has just realised the serious of the situation I am in and panic has started to set, the man in the doorway reaches down, hauls me up into the air and places me safely inside his carriage.

It turns out my savour is the guard. He kindly gives me antiseptic to clean my wounded knees and I spend the next hour or two with him and two other Indians guys who all don’t speak a word of English, and me not a word of Hindi.

I find my carriage at last

A couple of stops later, a man in a smart suit enters the guards van, as the other two men leave. He speaks English, and he offers to take me to my carriage at the next stop. As the train pulls in I again pass on my deepest gratitude to the guard and the man in the suit grabs hold of my free hand and runs with me along the platform to the first class carriage, where a couple of train officials are kindly waiting for me to make sure I get to my carriage this time.

I’m not sure if I managed to sleep much at all. I so wanted to tell someone what I’d been through but it was late so I laid down on my bunk bed and went through in my mind both how foolish and lucky I had just been.

Today was such a beautiful looking day that it made you want to look up at the sky and say,

“Well done sky, good job.”

The cat seemed to like it too…

I’ve been lucky to own an iPad for a months now and it’s proved very useful for various musical and web related things. When I first got it I had a look around the net for a notebook/moleskin or book style case, and eventually settled on one made by Treegloo. It worked well at protecting the iPad and is extremely well constructed but I always felt it was a bit bulky and after looking on the net came to the conclusion that this was a common feature of a lot of these cases i.e. those with a wooden frame surrounded by a book jacket cover such as those from Portenzo and DodoCase.

So, after browsing around the net a bit further, I read a post by someone suggesting fixing a silicone case inside the cover of a book… and that is what I did

The silicone case is a Belkin TPU Grip Vue for iPad – Clear suitable for the current original version of the iPad (iPad 2 hasn’t been announced at the time of writing this). The book is a copy of Biodynamic Gardening for Health and Taste by Hilary Wright, available for around a fiver from my local charity shop and the case is fixed onto the inside cover of the book using strips of velcro about 1cm wide, a strip on each side, quite close to the edge of the iPad where it curves up so so that it doesn’t add too much to the thickness. To keep it closed when moving it about I just use a largish rubber band.

The case is starting to look a bit scuffed up now after a couple of months use, but I don’t mind this too much, so long as it holds together which it should do with the strips of Gaffa tape fixed on the inside of the spine. Overall I love it as it disguises the iPad, is light and doesn’t mask the curved contours of the iPad making it much nicer to hold. You can even position it in a standing / propped up position for watching your favourite TED talks on.

The book that the cover came from is still usable too; glueing it’s dust jacket back onto it means it’s now become a paperback!

More photos available on my Flickr page.

I recently went to the launch party for my local Transition Town movement. I’d heard the term, Transition Town being used for a while as one of my housemates is an architect involved with this, but I had no idea what it was all about apart from knowing that it’s something eco friendly and generally groovy.

According to their website, Transition Towns is all about…

So I was right, it is about something eco friendly and groovy. There were all sorts of different ideas being presented at the launch party, among them, sustainable architecture, a food co-op selling locally grown produce, how to make your garden more wildlife friendly and bee keeping.

I didn’t get a chance to speak to the bee keeper but I hope these new bee keepers are being taught how to keep their bees ethically – i.e. to encourage the bees to produce a surplus of honey so the bees aren’t left just feeding on the sugared water that some bee keepers leave them after taking their winter food.

To find out more about Transition towns visit their website at… www.transitionnetwork.org/

After many long hours of designing and coding I’ve just finished redesigning this website.

There’s still a few things I want to change and tidy up, including a few oddities that are occurring in Internet Explorer but it’s the weekend, it’s a lovely day outside, and I want to go out and play in the sunshine!