For those wishing to be cool cats, NaNoWriMo is an annual event that challenges its participants to write 50,000 words on a story throughout the month of November. The point is to write. Not self-edit. Not realise 5,000 words into it that your 17th century period romance has oddly morphed into a zombie/vampire drama and could never cut it in the current market, saturated as it is with zombie and vampire stories. The idea is to start at the beginning and to reach the end — especially if you’ve never written a work of this size before.

NaNoWriMo is about finding a excuse to get that “I’ve always wanted to write a novel” out of you and onto paper or screen. It doesn’t matter if it’s tomorrow’s Catcher in the Rye or tomorrow’s toilet paper. The point is to take you through the process of creating an entire, rough first draft. Once you’ve completed it, you will ‘win’ NaNoWriMo and have a chunk of text that you can polish into some decent, extend upon, or use as a learning experience and move on to something better.

Sounds good, doesn’t it?

So after narrowly missing the boat last year, I resolved to do it this year and promptly forgot about it. Now I have a week to come up with some ideas, and I’m planning on using what I’ve learned from Plot & Structure. I probably won’t get a chance to finish the book, as each chapter ends with exercises that take time but are worth it, but we’ll see how things go.

I’ve now signed up for the NaNoWriMo website (as MattBruce) and posted this here, both showing my commitment and intention to write a 50,000 word novella or short novel. I’ll be showing my progress on the NaNoWriMo site as the site is designed for it and I’ll be too busy writing fiction to blog!

Hope to see you there. If you do join in, add me as a Writing Buddy as we can encourage each other. Otherwise, I’ll see you on the other side (or December, if you prefer).

Oh, for those who just need to see a progress meter, here’s something to whet your appetite:

Beginnings always excite me. So much promise and potential.

Due to the unusual seating setup, I ended up seated by the secretary and his partner and was pretty much within shouting distance of two other people, so it made most of the evening a relatively close-knit chat. Though some of the people began moving around and chatting after the main course, so I got to chat with a few other people, too, and it was in general a lovely night.

If you are new to a writing group, or you have somehow not managed to attend your group’s annual dinner (or similar), I highly recommend you make the effort. If nothing else, you have a nice meal, a few drinks and the chance to socialise with people you have a great deal in common with… even if some of them write in genres that you don’t like or couldn’t imagine writing. The depth and breadth of the genres in my group is breathtaking, and I find each of them fascinating as I get to know the people who write in them.

If you’re a writer (or wannabe writer) and you’re still flying solo: join a writing group. It will broaden your horizons, expand your social circle, teach you a great deal about writing and how to read, and will provide opportunities that sitting at home are much less likely to do.

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* They wouldn’t let us pay individually, as there were thirty of us. They wouldn’t let us pay as a group, as the group’s official cheque book was a business-type account without a guarantee card. In the end we did manage to convince them to let us pay by tables, of which there were three. Then began the inevitable ‘But I only had the lentils!’ bean-counting common to groups the world over. When I’m King Of The World, it will become law that all group meals will be totalled up and divided evenly between everyone who participated in the meal. Seemples.

To make up for that, I’ve decided to go for one of the big events of the publishing calendar: the London Book Fair. It takes place 19-21 April 2010 at Earls Court, and its website describes it as follows:

The London Book Fair is the global marketplace for rights negotiation and the sale and distribution of content across print, audio, TV, film and digital channels.

Taking place every spring in the world’s premier publishing and cultural capital, it is a unique opportunity to explore, understand and capitalise on the innovations shaping the publishing world. The London Book Fair brings you direct access to customers, content and emerging markets.

Makes me wish I had something notably pitch-worthy, providing me the dilemma of negotiating rights, sale and distribution…

So to be clear, it is not a literary festival where people leisurely read books and chat with authors and like-minded bibliophiles in between said authors giving talks about their new books, worlds or styles of writing. It is definitely an industry fair that helps determine the course of the publishing industry over the coming year, with wheeling and dealing happening all over the place.

In addition to the main Fair taking place from Monday to Wednesday, the weekend beforehand (17-18th) is when a number of seminars take place. And most of them are free.

It’s this combination of a ‘look inside the industry’ and seminars is precisely why I want to attend and have paid the £25 entry fee. I must confess it’s quite embarrassing looking at the attendee badge with its Matt Bruce – Author taking up most of the front, and I’m dreading the second shoe-drop at the Fair when I expect someone will ask, ‘Oh, so what have you written…?’ Still, this gets me access to all 3 days and any of the free seminars, though there is one paid-for  seminar I’m considering attending: How to Write For Screen: Film & TV Masterclass. It’s just a shame this 2½ hour class costs more than 3 days entry to the Fair itself…

I expect to attend more fairs and festivals during the year, so I’ll post about it here.

So who else is planning on attending these kinds of events in 2010, and where and when are they?

The Festival’s programme contains numerous well known authors discussing their works and providing Q&A sessions, river cruises with readings and discussions, writing and poetry workshops, events for children, and an event to end each day. Events need to be booked and many have a nominal charge, but some are free. A number of events have already sold out, so if you are interested in a bookable event, I’d suggest you do so sooner rather than later.

Of the events that haven’t sold out already, a couple of highlights for me will be:

• Irvine Welsh’s talk on his upcoming Trainspotting prequel, Skagboys
• Saturday morning’s writing workshops
• Rick Wakeman‘s talk on his upcoming book, Further Adventures of a Grumpy Old Rock Star.

I may make it to a couple of other events, but we’ll have to see how time and event booking turns out.

Hope to see you there, or hear about how the Festival went for you.

Edit 28-Sep: There’s been a slight change of plans for me. I was notified a couple of days ago that I’ve managed to obtain a ticket to a conference in London that takes place the same weekend as the Festival. The tickets for the conference (nothing to do with writing or literature) sold out in under 90 minutes last May, so I’m very pleased and fortunate to be going to that instead. See you at the Festival next year?