How Do You Decide What You're Going To Write For NaNoWriMo?

If you're in the position to be asking this question, generally you'll be sat in one of two situations. One of those situations is staring at a blank page and wondering what to put onto it. The other is having multiple ideas, too many really and either not knowing where to start or not knowing which to carry on with. There is one important thing to remember in each of these instances and that is there is no right answer. 

One of the things that is great about NaNoWriMo is that, whilst there is general idea of how we write for it, there are very few hard and fast rules for it. Obviously you want to write an original work (I include fan fiction and everything like that in my idea of what constitutes an original work, I just mean you can't borrow everything from something else), it has to be written in the timeframe and the genre doesn't matter. You can write more than fifty thousand words and you can write across a few projects if you really want to. One of my favourite things on that is definitely the ability to abandon a project if it is just not working.

For some of us, a blank page is exciting because of all of the possibilities that it presents, but for others, it's anxiety inducing because there is a lot of pressure from a blank page to fill it with something, and writers always want to write something great. It's hard because that kind of pressure, for most people, isn't conducive to a good working environment. When we stress ourselves too much, we actually make it impossible to achieve what we are trying to achieve, because stress compromises our cognitive functions. That being said, I know first hand that a little bit of pressure is good. Write or Die has only ever been as successful as it has because of the added pressure of Kamikaze mode. I think 4thewords battles are the same because, although you don't have to deal with the computer deleting your words if you don't keep writing, involvement in 4thewords only works if the game motivates you and then you want to beat the monsters, gather the items and all those other things that you do by writing. Obviously that extra activity causes extra pressure... 

If you don't know where to start and the blank page seems to baffling, write what you know. Write about people you know, write fan fiction, write something, because it flexes the muscles that you need to be creative, and it might be that you happen upon something when writing about something else. If you're still stuck, Write Ins, whether virtual or online, are a good way to shake your ideas around with other writers and I can guarantee there will be other people in the same situation. Some people LOVE talking about their current project, some people don't and some people will be as lost and just winging it. That's fine. It's also fine if it doesn't magic itself up in the first few days. There is a theory of micro-actions which suggests that taking the smallest of steps towards a goal actually helps to prod your brain into the right direction, so even just sitting down at the laptop or with the notebook and trying to tease out something  is a step in the right direction, even if it is only a baby step.

If you're in the opposite situation and you're struggling with too many ideas and not enough time, energy, focus or paper to crack on with all of them, figure out which one you are most passionate about first. There's nothing wrong with choosing to flit between a few different projects, though it is worth limiting this to only a handful because otherwise you'll waste time trying to get yourself back up to speed each time you change. If you need to write something  sad when your sad, violent when you're angry and dramatic when you're happy - I dunno, people are weird - then there's nothing wrong with that, and whilst traditional NaNoWriMo is bashing through fifty thousand words of one project, there's nothing wrong with using it to bulk up a few projects or even finish a few projects if the feeling takes you. Like I said, no right answers, but the great thing about there being no right answer is there is also no wrong answer. Even if you decided to cheat NaNo, which I am in no way supporting by the way, you're actually only cheating yourself. Cheating is definitely the wrong answer, even when there is no wrong answer.

If you want to write, whether that be for fun, to relax or for a career, cheating your way through NaNo isn't going to be anything like as entertaining as finishing your novel, it won't relax you as much as writing something that helps you to process thoughts and feelings and events and it's not going to produce a novel for you that you can then start trying to either self-publish or start querying for an agent or publisher. If you are going to do it, you just have to do it, and accept that sometimes it's going to be hard. I hate the phrase of what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but everything you write does make you learn, even when it's total crap. 

Sometimes, It's Not Even Being Tired,

I've already mentioned that over the last few weeks I have struggled a lot with a few things with the dreaded ADHD, and one of the biggest things with it, other than the slight identity crisis that it sent me into, was, or is, brain fog.

I am used to feeling tired. I have spent a long time being tired and not really knowing why, and it's in part because my sleeping pattern is massively affected by the ADHD, but it's also because a few things feel like 'tired' but they're not actually the feeling of being tired, so it doesn't matter how much sleep I get, those feelings or emotions or whatever may be there anyway, because sleep is not what I need in those moments. Sometimes, it's as simple as I need caffeine, because it is enough of a stimulant to be able to sharpen my focus a little bit and let me get on with what I need to do, sometimes, it's a bigger issue of being fully burnt out and needing to take some time out to do things that all me to reset a little and sometimes it is the beloved brain fog that I haven't really got used to and I don't really know how to shift, if there even is a way.

Mostly I am pretty good that I can drive even when I am having a bad day, but when I have a bad day with it, I really can't drive. Driving is like my base line because even though I've not been doing it for long, any time I render myself unable to drive because of medication or alcohol, I miss being able to use my car, and any time my car isn't there, I struggle without it. I'm rather attached to the freedom of just being able to go anywhere with it since I've done quite a lot of driving since I passed my test and not being limited to doing things I can get a lift or public transport to has been pretty great.

Over the last couple of days the brain fog has been so bad that I have kind of felt as though I shouldn't drive if I can avoid it, because caffeine isn't doing anything to make things clearer, sleep is doing nothing and I don't really know what else to try. Other people with ADHD have said that medication can help, but I would be lying if I said it didn't make me anxious because of all of the bad experiences I've had with medication for anxiety and depression. Honestly, the way I've been feeling recently feels like the early days of citalopram all over again, and nothing but time actually helped with that, and eventually recovering enough to come off of the medication all together. That also really helped.

Whilst I'm not sure what's causing it, I'm trying to battle through it and also realising that there is a problem with brain fog in that it makes me forget to do things like cook until the point where I get dizzier, I can't exercise because I already feel dizzy and don't want to go out on my own (as in, without another person) and if I took Chai then I would be concerned that if I fell over or collapsed walking her again then she would do a runner again (though when that happened, she had only been with me for a couple of weeks and may not have realised that her name wasn't China anymore when I was calling for her) and I can't remember what I've drank so I am more inclined to have coffee, given that it is caffeinated and the caffeine can help, but it is also very dehydrating so when the brain fog is even partly to do with dehydration, I'm at risk of making it worse. 

All of this makes me feel as though I sound incapable of looking after myself, and the truth is that sometimes I am. Sometimes I ask my mum if I can stay with her, or she can have Chai, because I either can't look after us both at that moment, or I can't look after myself if I'm focusing on her. There are times when I use things like HelloFresh, because they stop me from needing to plan or make too many decisions and their instructions are pretty simple. I can also tell that I've not been eating properly by how many of the recipes are sat around my kitchen. (I never said it was idiot proof.) Sometimes the things which have worked before don't work the next time things are hard and sometimes the things you think will work don't do anything. The whole thing is a balancing act between what I actually have the capacity to do and what will help me to focus less on things that I can get help for. I think that makes sense, but on the day I'm writing this I'm so foggy I'm not even sure. Then again, iced coffee, a banana and a packet of crisps have taken the edge off of the worst of it.

The Happy Accident of Being Called Charlie,

Fourteen years ago, I decided I was a bit sick of being called Charlotte, because being from where I am from people don't pronounce it properly and it has annoyed me for longer than I can remember. For reasons that have never been known to me I've never been much of a fan of because called Chaz or similar and I got to the age where Lotti felt a bit infantile on me. (No judgement for any older teens or adults called Lotti, Lottie, or any other spelling, it was just how it felt for me.) I decided I was going to try out Charlie, and if I hated it, well then, it was two years of college and then I was moving to London, so it didn't really matter. Yes, I had already decided I was going to London at that stage, even though I had never even heard of the university I went on to attend. 

When I use my actual name online or I talk to people in public, I've found people have a tendency to use pet names that drive me crazy. It was particularly bad when I worked in a DIY store and there was a tendency to call all of the guys mate and then single me out (I was usually the only girl in the store as there weren't that many of us in the company) by calling me either darling or sweetie (or something similar) and it winds me up. In that particular context, it was because the guys doing so looked at me sceptically when I gave them answers to the questions they were asking, and that was if they got over the reluctance of asking a woman in the first place, they would look at me sceptically and then try and locate the nearest male member of staff and then be satisfied by the same answer from them. One of the things I have always taken pride in is that if I don't know the answer to something, I will say I don't know, because I would rather do that than anything else. Whilst most of the people I met in the store didn't know me or know anything about me, I still took it personally (joys of ADHD, particularly when it's undiagnosed) and it's also really sexist. Assuming someone doesn't know something because of their gender is actually properly sexist even when you're not doing it intentionally. To be fair, I should have expected it a little bit, but really it wasn't a good job for me, and one of the reasons I got it was because I was a woman. I think the company were catching shade from somewhere about their diversity figures and the lack of women in the business, or they were trying to anticipate that it was going to happen eventually, so they were looking to recruit more women. 

Although I have never changed my name officially, I have considered it a number of times but I do occasionally go back to using Charlotte, though very rarely. My online name has been CharliesWrite for long enough that for things like emails, Charlie is ambiguous enough that a lot of people assume I'm male and have a tendency not to talk down to me, assume that I don't know things, and also tend to call me mate instead of the sort of pet names that make my skin crawl a little because they're a little too much like terms of endearment from someone that I don't know. It wasn't the reason I actually chose to use Charlie, but it was a happy accident. Honestly the decision to use the name Charlie was such a quick one, that the only thing I thought about was not being Charlotte, that Lotti had T's in it as well and that always caused a problem, and I wasn't that big of a fan of my middle name to start using that instead. (It's not horrendous or anything, but I just didn't fancy being called Elizabeth, because it didn't seem to fit me, and neither did Liz, Lizzie or Eliza, though if I had decided on Lizzie I would probably have spelt it was Lizzi because I really had something against the letter E, though I don't know why.) 

There are times when that ambiguity has caused a problem. My ex partner took great exception to the fact that my name was unisex, because he used to be 'accused' of being gay and dating a man called Charlie. He liked having photos all over his Facebook of the pair of us because at least then he could show people photos and 'prove' that he wasn't gay. It was something I never really challenged him on at the time, but it was always something he was pretty sensitive about and looking back on it I really wish I had asked him why the hell he cared. The idea that anyone would think he was gay was a really touchy subject. Then again, it did seem like when the conversation came up it was more that people were making fun rather than getting genuinely confused and in all honesty, I find it disappointing that people still think it's something to be joked about, or that me being called Charlie was such a big deal to some people. Anyway, being the stubborn person that I am, when he asked me to change my name for that reason or at least let him use a different version of it, I said no, but it made me realise I had become somewhat attached to the name, and what it represented to me and about me. I had kind of adopted it into being a part of my identity, and it's something I'm no longer quite sure how to put down, even if I wanted to. Even if my screen name confuses people when I'm trying to tell them how to spell it. He still tried to get me to use either Char, Charl or that one I've always hated of Chaz (God, I don't know why I hate that one so much but I really, really hate it on me) and I was just too stubborn to respond, or I would just ask him what my name was. Whether it is thankfully or sadly I don't know, but I was the more stubborn one, so the name Charlie stuck. 

What The Fudge Does Preptober Even Mean?

It's been over a week since the calendar flickered over into the dreaded month of October and for most people it means the world gets colder, the days get darker, and everyone has a mostly unneeded excuse to watch scary films. I say mostly unneeded because if you like it and you want to watch it, I think you should go ahead, but people like me need someone with them to be convinced to watch most scary films and a few of my friends won't even watch them then, but saying 'But Hallowe'en is coming' seems to be enough enticement. By the way, yes, I do know that Hallowe'en is considered to be an archaic spelling, but I don't care. If you don't know why it's Hallowe'en, click here. 

One of October's other names, at least if you are in the NaNoWriMo world, is Preptober. Preptober is the month before the biggest month on the calendar - NaNoWriMo - and it is when we get ready for November and the start of NaNo. For some people that means planning out their novel and what they are going to write, for some it is a scribble of an idea on the back of a postage stamp, and for others it is no different than any other month in the calendar in terms of writing. They write or they don't write, but they don't plan because writing is more fun by the seat of your pants. No prizes for guessing which camp I pitch my tent in! Preptober means different things to different people and often for me it's about nesting. Everything that I can do to make where I'm living more comfortable, and then also things like making ready meals for the early days of November, considering that otherwise I would either forget to eat, live on take out or I would just be having snacks that I could grab quickly. (Originally I just thought that this was being a full indoctrinated WriMo, but it's definitely more of an ADHD thing.) When I lived in the flat in Sutton, I did manage to convince myself to go to Morisson's a few times and get things from the salad bar, and even convinced myself to eat a banana once in a while. I think that that was the year I finished really quickly as well, though that was after I had finished the initial fifty thousand words and I was carrying on to see how far I got. I intended to write until about a hundred and fifty thousand but then I pretty much ran out of steam and decided to finish on something like a hundred thousand and one words because I quite like palindromes, but then realised that if I finished on a hundred and one thousand and two words, because that meant that I finished the last day with the exact same number of words as I finished on the first day, so whilst it wasn't the sort of perfect and obvious palindrome I was going for initially, it was still something like one. It made for a pretty graph anyway. 

This year Preptober is more about me putting myself back together a bit so that I can actually function through NaNoWriMo since I'm really struggling with executive disfunction and a few other things at the moment. This year it is even more important for me to use Preptober to get myself ready for November because otherwise November is going to be a rough one. I don't know what I will be writing by then, I have no concept of whether I will be struggling to write then or not, if it's going to be a little bit of a slog or if it will be something a lot easier like it has been before. When I was writing 'Fairies' I didn't know what I was writing until about day three and then I enjoyed the process of writing the rest of the novel, because it felt like it fell out of my head through my hands, and it was beautiful. I still love that novel like the day I wrote it, which is far more than the day I edited it. 

What's strange to note is that this is the first Preptober in a long time that I haven't been an ML. I decided to step down, and it was a decision I was somewhat torn by at the time, that I'm still torn on now, but ultimately I knew that it was the right decision to make. There were a lot of things going on that lead to me making that decision but none of it was not wanting to lead the region. I loved the London region. I love the people, I love the city and I love the community and events that have been years in the making, and it wasn't really something I ever thought I would be ready to step away from. Although it's not even close to being the reason I decided to step down, I'm actually glad that I'm not having the responsibility of MLing this year because it means that I can focus on looking after myself and making sure that I'm okay, or at least getting there. As much as it feels selfish to say it, I feel like it's actually quite important for me to do that right now.

What I have considered though is, given the issues with Twitter and my personal dislike of Discord, I wanted to think of a different way of being involved in the community. I've previously used Twitter a lot and also my blog, and whilst I'm still happy with one of those, I have been tempted by the idea of using Twitch particularly with 4thewords, but also potentially for a few other things, though saying that I'm not sure that NaNoWriMo would be the best time to do that because the kind of interactions which make a stream actually work aren't really the sort of thing that most people have time for during November, because some people are trying to juggle with their lives and their novel and other people are able to be intensely novel focused, and neither type of person is in the place to be involved with a Twitch stream, even if it would be a good platform to run an overnight event on, alongside Discord, which I really wish that we had thought about before, because during COVID we could have really used it, though I'm not sure that their co-hosting feature was available during that time. Whilst I'm considering it, I am thinking that it might be something that I need to work on for next year as opposed to trying to do it for this year, given that I'm not in a good place at present and given that it's the sort of thing that would take a bit more setting up than I have the time to devote to right now. I'm also not amazingly familiar with the system and again it's not the sort of thing that I think I can remedy as quickly as I would need to. Which is a shame, because it's the sort of thing that could be really cool. 

This turned far more into a stream of consciousness than I originally planned it to be, but sometimes that is what actually gets me to focus enough to write, so it's not a bad thing. Expect more babble as October goes on... 

Something Doesn't Feel Right,

 Something I have always noticed about myself is I need a reason for things; well, for everything really. When I'm struggling, emotionally, mentally and all that sort of thing, I want a reason for why I'm feeling the way I am feeling. I want to know what prompted it and what caused it and all those sorts of things. When I sat down to write this I started thinking, was I in denial all of the time that I thought I was okay with my diagnosis? Was it the calm before the storm and this is the storm? Is that the really simple thing to look back on and say, hey, that's where this started? There is more to it than that, of course. 

I've always had panic attacks, and they got a lot worse three and a half years ago, or just over that, before the pandemic started and then I was pretty lucky, because as much as the pandemic was anxiety inducing, I was of London, living with family and away from a lot of decisions I used to have to make. I just did my job, hung out with my parents, watched a lot of TV and went for a walk once a day so we didn't go completely mental. They've come back with a vengeance now and it's been a while that they've been back. They're interrupting my sleep, they're affecting me on increasing more days than they're not and they're making me feel broken all over again. I'm not saying that I was fixed, but I thought that I was getting better, and now I'm not so sure.

Emotional regulation isn't my strong point, obviously, but I just feel like I'm really struggling at the moment, more than I have for a while. I always hoped that by the time I hit thirty I would be different. I thought I would be more in control of my life and that my life would be very different from what it is right now. 

I wish there was something I could put on here as like a happy ending or something, but the truth is I'm not sure when things will get better and I'm not sure how to make myself feel better anymore. Things that have worked for a while, things that I have done for the whole of my life to make myself feel better aren't working, and that is really uncomfortable at best, and terrifying at worst. I don't even know if writing makes it better anymore, or if it ever did, because I have been writing even when I haven't felt great, but I just haven't been able to bring myself to post the things I have been writing.

Sometimes I Can't Decide What to Write About,

There are a few things I could have decided to write tonight, but I decided to write this, because writing about things which have made me happy make me happier, because it's something I always believe should be shared. That's not to say the debate was write something that made me happy or something that made me unhappy, but this was kind of my Tigger bounce, super happy moment of the week. 

A few years ago I decided to buy myself a really old typewriter, because it was the sort of thing that just made me happy, and whilst it still does, I tend not to write on my typewriters anymore because the majority of them hurt my wrists, and also there's a whole space issue that even in the 'new' house, I can't fix. In a similar way, I got really excited when my dad mentioned there was an old Singer sewing machine in a charity shop nearby and honestly, I just wanted to see it. I think they're really cool, partly because of how ornate they are, but also how simple, and they're such a powerful machine as well. I went to see it, and I just fell in love with it, so decided it needed to come home with me. I told myself it was fate, because I had just cleared a space that was the perfect size for the cabinet it came in, in the room that is, at least part time, my sewing room. I had to ask to collect it the next day because we couldn't have fit it in the car otherwise, but when I finally got it home - with a lot of assistance - I found a letter had been dislodged inside of it, and that made it feel even more like fate. 

So this letter, it was addressed to someone named Charlie and it was written in typical old lady hand writing that made me think of my Nana even though the name at the bottom was wrong and love was spelt wrong. It was strange because it was about the water, and I've just started paddle boarding and the lady said something - some of the letter read like coded nonsense - about telling the coastguard they would know who this Charlie was, because he was the little boy with the grin and the big gob. Meatloaf says two out of three isn't bad, and I have to agree...

Whether I can get the machine to run perfectly well is up for debate. Whether I just mend it to use the table side of it for my other sewing machines - because it's really well designed for being a sewing table - is more possible, but not preferable, but it is already something which has brought me immense joy, except for the moment where my mother asked whether I was planning on 'doing it up' in it's current colour, so just repairing the damage to the cabinet, or painting it with chalk paint, and I wondered how she could know me so little. I'm not against chalk paint on furniture, but I feel like some things are sacred and this is one of those things.

I'm currently on annual leave and keep planning to get on with some sewing projects, though I'm already a couple of days in and I have done literally none of them, so we'll see if it happens or  if sewing is just another of those hobbies I took up, got a little bit obsessed with and a little bit good at, and then got not even bored of, but just couldn't find the motivation or the time to keep up with. I'd love to say it doesn't happen that often, but that would be a total fib.

Today Didn't Suck, Too

In writing about days which were difficult, I had a quick scan back over things I have written in the last few months and I read over the blog I wrote when the paddle boarding session I was booked to join got cancelled. For the second time. Whilst I was epically frustrated there were a number of reasons that they had to be cancelled and whilst I was being a grumpy goose about them, I also completely understood that, but then somehow completely forgot to write about the day that the paddle boarding session I went to that DIDN'T GET CANCELLED! 

One of the biggest differences - okay, scratch that, it was just one of a long list of differences - was that instead of being a class which was teaching paddle board technique at the same time as doing some environmental work (litter picking), it was a social meet up of people who would fit into the middle of a Venn diagram of owns a paddle board and doesn't want to paddle board alone. It was a BYOB in the sense of Bring Your Own Board - though someone did also bring beer and I have to say, I was impressed he stayed on the board, because I couldn't even san alcohol - it was far more local to me and it was organised by a person who wanted to go out on her board rather than a charity organisation. And it happened. And it was great. 

I wasn't great, I fell at the first hurdle. And the second. And the third. I'm not sure which hurdle is which but I left home without a towel for the human, though I had brought my changing robe, which is kind of towelling inside, and also a towel for the board, so that once I got it out of the water I could dry it down again. I pumped it up, and I thought the pressure gauge on my pump was broken so just had to do the best I could with it and guess. Here's a tip, never do that. It wasn't pumped enough when I first tried to get onto it in the water, but one of the others helped me and got it to where it needed to be. I nearly fell on my a** because the ramp into the water - which is supposed to be the easier access point - was mossy at the bottom and I didn't expect it, though I managed to turn a stumble into a rather graceful slide and was able to laugh about it as soon as I was in the water, and then I got onto the board okay in the end. 

I was really proud of myself for trying to stand up. And falling in. Then getting back up. And then falling back in. And then listening to what some of the more experienced (it's not hard to be more experienced than me at this) people and having another go, standing for long enough for someone to have taken a photo from across the lake, and then... you guessed it... Falling. In. Again. 

Despite feeling like a tit for not getting stood up and for not being able to paddle in a straight line and for a few other things, I was blissfully happy, because for one thing it meant I hadn't spent a lot of money on equipment for something I hated, but also because I am a total water baby and despite the fact that there were points I was scared - because I am a water baby with a fear of deep water - I got on with it, and I enjoyed it and I spent time chilling out, and making friends and doing something different and it was completely needed. It made me feel like myself, far more than I have been in a good few months.

I've been again since and still haven't got the knack of pumping the board up properly and I still can't stand  up overly well, but falling in isn't scaring me anything like as much, I'm getting good at knowing what I need with me, and also I've been to a couple of places now and I always think seeing different places to do the same thing is good. I'm thinking I need an electric pump and to go back to the shallower lake to give myself the best chance of figuring out the standing up part of it, and then I think I will be flying. Well, paddling. 

Anyway, I guess the point of all of this is, I'm not miserable all the time and although some things have gone wrong recently - A LOT of things have gone wrong recently - it's not everything. There have been some really good moments, too. And I also bought Chai a lifejacket so that she can come on the board at some point, and that is something I cannot wait for.