What's a Doc To Do,

Today I really will not rant, though this is something else about which I am passionate. 

I've written about organ donation on here before, but one of the great things to happen (relative to your views on the issue of course, but in my opinion it is great) since that time is that the UK parliament has passed a law to introduce an "opt-out" system for organ donation. Naturally, as is customary of our time, I shared the article on my Facebook page with words of celebration for the lives that this will save. 

A friend has pointed out that very few people die on the waiting list in comparison to the number of people this new law will affect, so I Googled. These stats are from the Guardian in September 2017, so are slightly out of date by now, but they were the best I could find:

As well as the 457 people who died last year while on the transplant waiting list, a further 875 were taken off it, mainly because of ill health, with many dying shortly afterwards. As of last week there were 6,414 people in need of a new organ on the UK transplant waiting list.4 Sep 2017

To me, that is too many, though to me 1 person dying when we have the resource to stop it would be too many quite frankly, though it could be worse. In America one person dies approximately every 20 minutes waiting for an organ, so small mercies I guess.

Like with blood donation, my very logical side likes to ask "Would you be happy to receive it?" If the answer is yes, which it is, then I don't see why my answer to giving that donation should be any different. I tried to explain this to my mother, who you would assume would be used to me by now, as just an extension of my recycling obsession. My kidneys are going to do *nothing* that is good for anyone if I'm in the ground or otherwise, so why would I not want whoever my next of kin was to say to the doctors, if someone can use it, take it. I'd much rather the doctor be in a position to say, well that's a kind offer _____, but there's no one on the waiting list than have 457 people die in a year because no one wanted to think about signing up to the register.

This is my big sticking point: very often people either don't want to think about it or they don't care. That's not to say that they don't care about the 6'414 people on the waiting list it's that they don't care. They have no issue with donating their organs, but they don't feel strongly enough about it to go out of their way to sign up to the register. It drives me up the wall.


I get that it's a horrendous conversation. I recently got a pension statement which stated that I hadn't designated my next of kin who would receive the money if I died before getting it (really depressing though) so had to speak to my mum about putting her down as my person. And what I wanted her to do with the money. It was not a great conversation and I didn't even get into the whole living will thing of please don't leave me on a ventilator if there are no signs of brain activity, but my mother is the type to call it Blackpool illuminations if there are lights on in rooms you aren't in, so I'm not too worried about that one (Mum, if you read this, I am joking, but seriously, off switch, please). I don't know if it's a society thing or a humanity thing that talking about living wills and everything is just branded as morbid and we shy away from it, but really I would prefer to make that the legal stipulation, rather than a blanket opt out system. 

If we all had to answer questions regarding our care at the end of our life, since that can happen so quickly with an accident, then our upset relatives wouldn't have to make those decisions in what can already be the most upsetting period of their lives. 

Since that's not going to happen though, I'm going to celebrate this as a bit of a win. 

Time Worth Wasting,

I would love to say that in the time since I last posted a blog, or the time since I wrote about losing the novel even, I have been a perfect version of myself and I have spent the time needed to re-write the novel. I have sat there and stared at the screen and mechanically typed - whilst this is not a verbatim copy of what was previously there, it is enough. It is better. The crap has been sheered away and it is better. I would love to say that, but it's just not true...

This festive season I have spent quite a bit of time knitting. I have been knitting as opposed to typing, which is productive - I have produced quite a lot of blanket patches - but no pieces of a novel. There is a reason, but I'm not sure that I am even being honest with myself about it. 

Part of me wants to tell myself that I needed to give myself some time off and some time to heal. I would love to believe that one, but I also know that it is more likely to be I'm scared to try and write it again. Part of me is scared that I will write it again, not back it up and I will lose all of my words again, but part of me is scared because even though I have plot points, even though I can walk my way through the plot points and I will have a lot of it back, it's always a fear that I will struggle to write it. It's scary to stare at the blank screen and not be sure as to whether or not I can fill it with words again. 

The festive season is over now, so I want to move forward with getting back to writing, though I'm not certain I will start off with that novel. Here we go. 

Bring it on 2018. 

Illogically Yours,

I am one of these people who likes to be pretty logical. I chose to do a degree that made me be logical and think logically through arguments. The problem is I have to stop, sit and think about it.

And most I don't. 

I don't sit and think about it at all, so I didn't wash my hair before getting my ear piercing and now I need to do it before work tomorrow. It is going to hurt like hell, I know, but it's not going to last that long. And it's no worse than me trying to scratch my ear and accidentally flicking my piercing and feeling the pain of that.

People then ask me what I do it for, and the obvious one is asking if you do it for attention. There is never anything more annoying than this question, because while some people do things for attention, I don't get piercings for it. 

The big reason is I like them. I can't explain why any more than people can explain why they like a certain type of music as opposed to others. They please me, like acoustic guitar music, and that is a good enough reason for me. 

Now, my other reason isn't the enjoyment of pain so much as it is that feeling of having accomplished something. I'm scared of needles, but I have to have them in order to have my piercings. The idea of something being painful freaks me out, but I have to get past that, and I do. I know that I am stronger than my fears. 

Sometimes when I need to remember that I can be brave, I just have to look at them and know that I had to be brave to have them. If I have done it before, I can do it again, and I will. 

Sometimes bravery is facing pain, sometimes it's facing criticism and sometimes it is facing failure. I know it is possible to fail every time I send chapters somewhere or self-publish anything, but the only thing that being scared achieves is making me fail in a different way. 

Basically, I'm putting my big girl pants on and getting on with this. 

Catch you later.

Hello Sunday,

I'm well aware of the fact that I had said I was going to take this year as it comes and three days in I am still committed to doing that, but I'm also committing myself to a couple of other things. Thankfully it's too late for me to commit to dry January, but I've realised recently that the amount I drink is not really a problem; I just need to remember train times when I'm out and that, when I don't drink for a while,  have a very low tolerance for alcohol, but that's not too much of a big deal. I'm not the sort of person who has to drink to have fun or to relax, I am by no means a person who comes home and opens a bottle of whatever before they unwind for the evening, I just really really like cocktails, and I figure that in the grand scheme of things, it's not such a bad thing.

The big one I'm committing to is I'm going to be submitting chapters to a publisher this year. I have already started them, I know where I'm going with them and I'm just trying to plod along and get it done. It's kind of terrifying because I don't have any clue as to whether or not they will be accepted, and I don't know how I will take it if they're not, but I don't try I'm never going to know. I don't want to spend the next few years thinking about how things could be if I actually did it, so I'm going to try and just do it. It's a terrifying thought, though. 

The second biggest one is I'm committing myself to one blog a week, every week, until the start of 2017. I'm going to aim for doing on a Sunday, and I'm not putting a word limit on it, but I know from experience that the act of sitting down and focusing my mind on writing something is a good thing. It is what National Novel Writing Month teaches me every year, and yet every year I seem to be able to kid myself into thinking that there's a Writing Fairy who hibernates for 11 months and then pops out in November, screams da-dah! and suddenly a novel pops out of my ridiculous little hands as if by magic. It's not magic; it's hard work. Come on. 

The last thing is I am going to spend time reading this year and thank the gods it is because I want to be reading and not because I have essays and exams to write, and that's a beautiful feeling. It's so easily possible to get addicted to reading when it is a good book or story or poem or anything really. If van Houten wrote a shopping list, I would probably be inclined to read that to. The fact is I have a love for so many authors and I read very, very little in 2015. I watched all of the films, but books didn't go so well. Especially not finishing books. My God, I started 1984 again, but then stopped past halfway through to pick up To Kill a Mockingbird so that I could finish that before reading Go Set a Watchman, and then didn't finish that because it's no To Kill a Mockingbird. I also started countless philosophy books for exams and thought, oh, this is very interesting I shall have to read more when I graduate. Well, Charlie, your diploma is in the drawer and those books are still gathering dust. 

Anyway, I'm probably just spouting the same New Year idealisms as most people right now, because apparently the changing of one calendar to a new one, a night of fireworks and the changing of the last number in the date make us feel like we ought to be wildly different than we were just a day or a week earlier. For some, New Year holds a lot of meaning. I know of a person who seems to wait until New Year when we fall out to try and fix things because New Year was important to us 9 years ago, but for me, it is not special, it is not magical, and it's only real significance is that it marks a passing of a lot of times since everyone last got hysterically reflective over their lives. I can't hide away from these reflections and I can't stop myself looking at the good and bad things that have happened between one loud, drunken celebration and the next (even though I have only celebrated one New Year in such a way and the rest of them I have been in my pyjamas). What I do think though is that New Years Eve makes an excellent bookmark. People ask me when I became a vegetarian - when did I make this Massive decision which really impacts my life and I do my best impression of a goldfish, attempt to remember how old I am and subtract 13. If I ever get the opportunity to be asked he question, when did you decide that you were serious about a career in writing, I want to know that answer almost to the minute. This is not a whimsical decision. This has been a part of my life for a long time, but now it's more than that. 

Also, if you want to see one of my favourite photos from graduation, check out my Twitter profile. @charlieswrite

*

No, it's not a flipping snow flake, it's a special speckle, and it happens to be named Charlie. 

So, it's been a week since I last wrote a blog and whilst the world has not shifty immensely in that time, well, not in the grand scheme of things, little things have been happening, and we all love Little Things, (yes, this version, but not only this version) don't we?

I'm sat here with a cup of loose leaf Ceylon (all those who don't drink tea, just read as "fancy tea") thinking about the past week and partly all the stupid things I have done. In case you don't know, I'm a bit of a spanner sometimes, and the joys of that include messing up a hotel booking because the website crashed and I panicked, because I just wanted it sorted so I could go to sleep before my early driving lesson, and stalling the car in the middle of a junction and then just panicking.

But, spanneriness aside, I travelled to Portsmouth on my own (so proud), had a wonderful time at a lovely friend's birthday, chatted with her lovely friends and shamelessly promoted my novel as I have been told I have to but truly detest doing!!! I've also cleaned and half tidied my flat, which is a God, Jesus & The Holy Spirit working in unison kind of miracle. And I have been writing. And missing a laptop. Not the Craptop so much, and definitely not the ridiculous keyboard I bought for my iPad, but a portable computer of some variety that I can fit in my bag. Though if I do look at getting one to work alongside my computer - which, let's face it, is going to present all sorts of technical problems that I don't want to fluff about with really - the key component is going to be the weight of the thing because my old Toshiba was like lugging a bag of bricks everywhere and I don't have the energy for that. I didn't back then either, but not the point. 

Also, do I need another piece of technology that I have to check is not under my pillows before I go to sleep at night. Phone, tablet and fitbit are quite enough, I think.


Anyway, after a week that felt like being on Oblivion at points (video there for those of you who haven't been on it) I'm now trying to turn my attention towards Saturday the 31st of October. No, I don't mean Halloween, I mean Midnight/MyLifeIsOver-NaNoHasBegun NaNo 2015. Oh yes, back to that bittersweet pain in the ass. I think it will be my fifth year to compete. I think. I'm not certain. Meh, that doesn't really matter. What matters is that after being devastated at being only a few hundred words off of a 15k day a few years ago, it's going to happen. I will make it happen. I already have a special tea pot to help. (I much prefer loose leaf tea, but it's a real pain to make it cup by cup, so I can just make it in my tea pot and the have enough to last me through a writing stint. 

I'm kind of worried about this NaNo, because I didn't actually write last year, which felt alien and weird and I regretted so many times and considered trying to catch up, but it wasn't going to happen with my dissertation as well. Also, I've got about three things that I'm really enjoying on the go, but one is too far gone for me to write an additional 50k, one is too involved and my brain would be falling out of the nearest exit and the other one, I don't want to rush, because I've felt like writing it before, then just decided to let it stew for a bit. 

Maybe, if I'm lucky, I can do another Fairies trick, be clueless until day 3/4 and then just play a bloody blinder and have something kind of wonderful pop out of nowhere, but I'm somewhat reluctant to do that. Losing NaNo is not something I do with any kind of poise or grace. I don't know. There's still some time yet. I need to go food shopping between now and then... The last thing I want to do is have another run where when someone asks me when/what I last ate, I can't actually remember what it was or say for certain it was that day. 

This could be a lot of fun... 

Where's Home?,

I know it's been a long time since I posted a blog and for that I really do have to apologise. Last week, I was over happy and completely distracted by the beauty of the scenery in Greece and almost dying every time we were on the road. I wish I was kidding, but the route between our resort and the airport (and everything else) is littered with blind bends, but the Greeks don't seem to know that means you shouldn't be overtaking on the wrong side of the road. The over happy was added to when Ben arrived. I was so happy and so settled there that I cried getting on the plane and when the plane took off and when the plane flew back for a last look at the town and then turned back towards home. I cried more when Greece got through to the final 16 in the World Cup for the first time in the history of ever though. I was so proud, but it hurt a little inside that I wasn't in Greece to celebrate. I'm just settling down to watch their next game with all spare digits and limbs firmly crossed. I'm getting quite irritated though by all the wrong pronunciations of the Greek names!

Whilst I was out there, my awesome writing equipment collection was expanded by my acquisition of a glass blown quill. My parents and Ben foresaw it sitting at the bottom of drawer in my desk and that I would never use it, but I have been using it so far. It's amazing. It does mean that there are bottles of Quink across my coffee table at the moment though. 

Since I've been back, I've managed to complete a night shift (only the second of my life, and I'm still no fonder of them), join a temp agency, have a completely controlled, yet still unsuccessful trip to Oxford Street and have been given a full time temp job working in a field I'm actually both experienced and interested in! It's wonderful. Well, it will be until I have to get up at 6am again tomorrow. At least yesterday, and the rather soggy trip to Wimbledon, gave me a reminder of what that is like.

So after a fortnight where the biggest events were to do with overly large insects or tortoises or the lack of spinach pies in our favourite eatery, this week has been a pretty big culture shock. 

I have a lot to do at half time. Hopefully this will be a good match. 

From a Little Corner in Paradise,

I think the general rule is that you don't post a blog about your lovely holiday spot until the weather is something to brag about, so ner ner na ner ner, it's been 30* here today, and it made me feel a bit dizzy....

Going back to one place in Greece isn't something my family and I tend to do, but we all agreed that Stoupa was worth it, so here we are, and I can't say that we have been disappointed. Last year we tried to cram an awful lot into one week, so there were a couple of things we unfortunately missed out on, and we're trying to hit them this year in the two weeks we have, as well as repeating some of our favourite things from last year. 

Rather than rely on the tour operators this year, we decided that we were going to hire a car, because the Kalamata one way system really isn't that difficult to navigate, but that wasn't going to be the first problem. Kalamata and Stoupa are both shielded by a pretty vast mountain range that make the weather somewhat unpredictable and also a little bit volatile at times. The Gatwick flight (my flight) was left circling the run way for half an hour as there were two thunder storms over Kalamata airport and there was a German plane that air traffic control wanted to get down and clear of the runway before we made our 'final descent' - otherwise known as that terrifying moment where everyone who doesn't like flying is convinced that they are about to die. 

Last year, I couldn't stop laughing because the customs office wasn't even manned, but this year topped even that, because my mother was waiting for my baggage at the carousel even before I made it through passport control. She later told me that there was a sign that no one was to pass through the sliding doors into the arrivals lounge, but no one was paying attention, so why would she? 

So before too long we were off out of the airport car park and towards Kalamata proper, with my dad and I attempting to remember the way around the one way system ( I have made the round trip more times than my parents, because of the trips I went on last year) but we somehow made a wrong turning through the system, however all was not lost. The general gist of it is to get all the way to the other side of the city and all the way to the sea front, turning up the road that goes into the mountains by the big posh hotel that looks kind of out of place in Greece. When you get onto that road it's pretty much a straight (hahaha, no, like Greek straight) road all the way to Stoupa. As in no junctions. Thankfully we have it about sussed because we're doing another airport run on Sunday to get Ben. 

With the delay and the drive, we didn't arrive 'in resort' as the Thomas Cook people say until about half past three in the afternoon, and with all the stuff like checking into the apartment, unpacking and sourcing water that is actually drinkable, it very soon got to hungry o'clock and we needed to choose which of the tavernas would be the first to stand the test of time, and memory. 

Our apartment is just up the road from two of our old favourites 'Yesterday and Today' and 'Pefko' and no one was really in the mood for a walk (and I was in the mood for my free 'half kilo of wine' as a lifetime member at Pefko so off we went to there. The feeling of 'it's good to be home' doesn't even cover it. Some people think that they were born in the wrong era, I was just born in the wrong country. Everything for the wine to the olives and the stuffed potatoes was utterly divine. I fell into bed more than happy that night. 

I wishi. Could say that the weather for the first two days was as glorious as today, but it wasn't, though my mother and I still managed to get a couple of sun burns to prove the contrary, but more on that later. It's getting close to midnight here and I don't want to be wasting sun light tomorrow morning. 

 

Does It Feel Like a Tuesday?,

My very simple answer to that one is no, it does not feel like a Tuesday. 

My university timetable this year means I have a three day weekend (Saturday to Monday) and so the start of my week (Tuesday) is where I get 'that Monday feeling' aka the first day of the new week where pajamas are banned as a wardrobe option and you have abandon your duvet and hope it will take you back later. Normally, it doesn't really bother me so much, but today, it's driving me nutty. 

Part of that is due to the fact that my Tuesdays are normally a reasonably easy day. Come in, sit through two hours of lecture and then go home, but today I have a meeting at lunch and am working this evening. And I spent the weekend in Budapest. Yeah, that makes 'that Monday feeling' even more sucky than a hangover.

For those of you who didn't already know this, I turned 21 just under a week ago, and after puzzling for a long time as to what I did actually want for my birthday, my parents and I agreed that a little weekend city break was the perfect option, and Budapest held some kind of appeal even though I had less than no idea what was there other than the River Danube. Even so, the trip was booked, we were packed and ready to f*off to another country for a few days - the only obstacles being getting up at 3am and driving to Stansted. Ugh. 

What I found amazing - other than the pilot not knowing that in order to land, we must first take off... - was that when we landed, the sun was bright and the temperature was creeping it's way up to 22◦ and then it stayed there for most of the day. I was as pink as one of the Care Bears that evening. 

It was a weekend of a lot of walking - a lot of the interesting architecture and the shopping district is all down by the river, which we were staying about 2miles from - but the chimney cake and the views definitely made up for it, and even the Terror Museum was well worth a look, even though there wasn't much of it actually translated into English (and where it was, the mistakes were kind of distracting!) 

Something that was more interesting (as in, well, that's odd) than interesting (as in, ooooh, that's catching my interest) was the set up of our room. I haven't quite figured out why the bathroom had a window that looked out into the bedroom, but perhaps I don't want to know the reason. Don't get me wrong it's frosted up to normal human shoulder height (so up to the level of my nose) and there is a blind over it, but the design flaw to that is that the pully for the blind is on the OUTSIDE! It's rather peculiar, but as long as you are sharing with someone you trust or don't mind seeing you in the shower, it's not too odd I guess.

I can't decide if the best part was that I got to spend so much time with Ben (sorry, I know that's cheesy :P) or the fact that he ordered breakfast in bed for us on our last morning there. Drinking Hungarian fizzy wine and having dippy eggs and pancakes was a pretty special way to start our last day out there, and shopping was obviously the best way to end it. 

Something to keep in mind is, if you go to the same shops we have over here, the pricing is going to be the same, but it doesn't require going off of the beaten track in order to find something local and a lot cheaper. I was really surprised by the relatively low cost of food, and even cheaper cost of alcohol, though I wouldn't have been quite so surprised if there were the same amount of stag parties on the plane out there as the plane coming home. The fact that you can get a shot of Jaeger, or Unicum for as little as 290Ft (about 80p) in bars on the main street makes it pretty attractive for such events. 

If you want to take a look at some of the photos, you'll have to check out my Instagram or Facebook. :) 

90,

So, after reminding myself with my last blog that I need to stop procrastiKNITTING, I have since managed to finish editing roughly half of the novel - content, not formatting unfortunately - watched far too many episodes of Grand Designs, come up with yet another design for the house I would like to build one day, which of course made me wish all over again that I was studying to be an architect and also managed to finish the back, the front and almost a full sleeve of a new jumper (baby sized). 

Whilst I know that my Knitsmithy ought to take a back seat to my Wordsmithy for a little while, it's more difficult to convince yourself to go on to review what you have previously done than it is to either knit more of a cutesy little hoodie or to stitch it together, and I think the reason is this. 

When it comes to Wordsmithy, it takes a lot of time and effort, and once done, you are best advised to leave it alone. When you have finished knitting something, you can give it away as a gift or just torture stuffed animals with what you have produced, and you can do it with the TV on without knitting the characters from The Big Band Theory or doing something equally ridiculous. In the space of a couple of weeks will have managed to produce three baby jumpers, two of which are adorable, one of which was my first attempt at knitting something to a pattern and there was more than once when I threw it on the floor and complained that I wasn't playing anymore because it was too big of a pain in the ass. Yes, I am a grumpy fool.

Even with half done, it is really difficult to focus on editing Yours, at the moment on account of the lack of sleep in my life, which is being caused by the really uncomfortable mattress. As is a custom with rented accommodation, our mattresses are at the point where they are sagging as you sit, so until the arrival of the new ones which have thankfully been ordered, I am resorting to sleeping on the airbed that I keep in case we have house guests, because my back doesn't take well to springs poking it at random intervals. 

At least it's now half way there...

From October,

I do realise that's been almost an entire month since I've posted anything on here and for that, you all have my apologies. I've been having some pretty awesome adventures, been spending some quality time with the loved ones and have also encountered a couple of health problems, but I'm now on the mend, and just in time, as NaNoWriMo2013 starts at midnight tonight. Are you excited? 

I KNOW I AM!! 

I'm also petrified. For those of you who don't remember, I was a stroppy little sod last year after not achieving my favourite 'I have no life' goal of completing a 10k day. It is quite literally as the name suggests, a day where you write 10,000 words. I took three days off last year and finished on the 20th of November - definitely an 'I have no life outside of NaNo' achievement, but I couldn't quite feel satisfied. This year my goal is to have that 10k day. Maybe even have two, one for this year and one to heal my wounded pride from last year....I'm kidding. I think....

I've already had one of those nutty 'OHMYGOD IT'S NEARLY NANO; IMMA DIE!' moments yesterday, so it's probably a good thing that my housemates are in Portsmouth and there's possibly a strike of our uni lecturers, because I don't cope with people very well the day NaNo starts and I get the same sort of look as a piece of flat pack furniture with no instructions. (The best description of it is, I don't know what it is, and I have less idea of what to do with it. That kind of a face.)

On the plus side, I have an idea, a vague form of a plan, and a freezer drawer full of homemade ready meals, so that I don't just resort to pizza and coffee. I am also, because of my recent health blip, required to eat at least once a day so I can take my medication. It also requires me to consume vast amounts of orange juice, so maybe I won't end up with too dreadful of a NaNoFlu this year - trust me, it's a thing - but then again, who can know what November will bring? 

I have two gigs planned, can hopefully throw in a trip back home to see Jamie, Dean and their lovely cohort of Manchester WriMos, a rugby game this weekend (no, I'm not playing, look at the size of me for Pete's sake. :')) lectures, assignments, my family, my friends, my job, my amazing boyfriend :), and the general things of life like cooking, cleaning and the wonders of the ASDA weekly shop. There's Christmas shopping, sending Christmas cards and all manner of stupid things to think about, but they can wait, because it's coming, it's starting. 

REAL LIFE ENDS TONIGHT, 

Welcome to NaNoWriMo2013

Running With It,

I'm starting to wonder if running in the mornings is detrimental to everything else I do in day, because it seems as though I'm so knackered that all I want to do is crash on the sofa watching television for the rest of the day. It's gruesome, because I spend only half an hour running and then it becomes something which takes up my entire day. I'm glad that I only go running once every two days, or I would get nothing done. 

I've just had a look over the old blogs, because I knew that when I had got through formatting the latest novel, I had put down a provisional date (two, in fact) as to when it would be released, the first of which was going to be on the two year anniversary of the CharliesWrite blog (7.3.13) the second being my 20th birthday (19.3.13) neither of which actually happened - obviously. Anyway, for those of you not connected on Twitter (@charlieswrite) or Facebook (search: Charlie Yarwood Author) I'm now not working to any sort of provisional dates, BUT the initial formatting is now done and so is the first edit where most of the problems have been ironed out. All that needs to happen now is a little bit of moving words around and then a proof read and then it will be arriving onto the Kindle AND Amazon.com AND Amazon.co.uk (+++all of the European Amazon sites!!) Everything is designed and ready to go when the content is ready! 

Anyway, I'm going to make myself another mug of tea and start work on something different, because I would rather avoid having a typo on the front page of the first edition this time, because that would upset me...

NaShoStoMo,

Any of you that have been anywhere near me in the month of November will probably remember that I turn into a coffee fuelled, pizza loving nutjob with essentially bi-polar levels of energy. For those of you who don't know why, it's because of the beautiful thing which is NaNoWriMo. Unfortunately/thankfully the calendar of writing competitions is not complete, i.e. there's not something going on every month, which is good because I could quite easily die of heart failure within six months if it did, but these are the ones I know.

January - NaNoEdMo (National Novel Editing Month)

April - NaShoStoMo (National Short Story Month) + ScriptFrenzy (Dear Grant Falkner, you cannot kill that which we keep alive!)

June - Camp NaNoWriMo 1

August - Camp NaNoWriMo 2

November - NaNoWriMo!! (National Novel Writing Month)

December - NaNoFiMo (National Novel Finishing Month)


A few years ago, I made an attempt at Script Frenzy, but since I favour description more than dialogue, it didn't really work out overly well (I still keep the spirit of it alive though and believe that the competition should be continued for those who wish to participate.)

When NaShoStoMo was mentioned, I shyed away from it, thinking I didn't have enough ideas for short stories to complete one a day for a month, but since it's only 200 words (min.) per story, why not give it a try, hey?

So, instead of editing my novel today, I'm going to attempt to catch up with NaShoStoMo. 17 short stories in one day. Possible? I think so. :P