Tag Archives: NaNoWriMo

November 3, 2021 · 6:05 pm

No-vember Novel

Every November for the past ten years I’ve sat down with typewriter and written 50,000 words (at least) about something. First there were novels, and eventually there was a memoir, then an account of my hike around Mont Blanc. Two trilogies later (one with a 4th book), a humorous philosophical tale, and a variety of things have come from my mind onto paper. I spent a year of spare time editing only one of these, and many hundreds of hours editing every last thing I have written to date. Since writing two books last year, one in November and another that followed right on the heels of that, I have had in the back of my mind that this November I would just sit down and do it again. Then it hit me that I really didn’t have to do it again. I decided to allow myself to fail. What a relief! The fact remains that at this moment I don’t have much to say. Part of the problem is that after you have written a lot of books, there comes a realization that you can do it if you want to, but there’s nothing to prove anymore. It would have been great if my books had shot to the top of the best seller list, but that only happens with the rarity of lottery winning, and from what I observe a lot of best sellers are pure crap. I don’t want the life of a professional author anyhow, running all over the place promoting their work and listening to people who don’t have a clue discussing the meaning of it.

What I am missing is the pleasure of having my Olympia Traveller on my lap and hammering out 1700 words a day, then reading what I wrote to my wife every night. One day I might write another fictional book, but my next writing project will be to finish up the book I started long ago about how to build a guitar. Now that might sell, as the world seems to be filled with aspiring guitar builders these days. Where do they all come from? Why are there so many more guitars than guitar players? Do pianists all own a dozen pianos?

The magnifique Facit. IKEA should sell these…

So, to keep up my typing dexterity and to taste the pleasure of putting words to paper I’ve been writing poems every Friday night after the pizza. My wife writes one too, on her sole typewriter – a 1953 Oliver #4 – one of the cutest and best typewriters ever conceived (and I’ve owned 200 of them). Unlike me, she’s perfectly content with one good typewriter. I still have to restrain myself from adding to the collection however, which stands at 97 today. I have one up for sale however, which is proof that I’m not hoarding them, right? Every year we design our own Christmas card and write a poem for the inside. I’m working on that now, but the poem takes the most work. To get into practice I wrote a couple of poems off the top of my head, which will very likely not be suitable for the Christmas card, but might be good enough for this blog. Well, maybe not but I wrote them so I’m going to put them up.

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Filed under Christmas, NaNoWriMo, Poetry, Typewriters, Uncategorized, Writing

Tagged as christmas poem, facit typewriter, NaNoWriMo, novel, typewriters

December 9, 2020 · 9:16 pm

Bookmaker

When I was at my aunt’s funeral, about 50 years ago, my Dad whispered to me that there was a guy in the hall who was a bookmaker. It turned out he was my Dad’s step brother, and he had been a millionaire and broke again more than once. I am a book maker too, but of a different sort…

Nanowrimo is over and I have printed my book. I started typing on October 30^th with several pages, then began in earnest on November 1^st and wrote all the way until December 4^th, with but one day off. I wrote over 80,000 words and got a serious back spasm along the way. All the writing was done on manual typewriters, mostly a small group that I prefer; the Hermes 3000 & Smith Corona 5 for desktop portables, and the Hermes Baby, Olympia SF/Traveller, Olivetti Tropical (Hermes Baby clone) & Olivetti Lettera 22 for smaller ones that I use on my lap.

Instead of sending my book off to a POD house for printing, I decided to make my own book for the first copy anyhow. I checked out some videos on book binding and researched how to set up a printer to print signatures. I wish I’d known this earlier! It’s not difficult and very enjoyable. I printed the book at half letter size, 5.5 x 8.5 inches precisely, so the signatures are printed 4 pages to a letter size sheet. The PDF print driver allows this to be done and all you have to do is set the number of pages in each signature. I set mine to 5 pages, and then printed 20 pages at a time to fill the five sheets on two sides. You could go ahead and print the whole thing at once however, but then you’d have to sort the signatures afterwards. You need a laser printer that will duplex, I should add.

sewing signatures on the Kenmore with whatever thread was loaded already

Rather than hand stitch, which was taking too long, I decided to sew the signatures on a sewing machine, which went through 5 sheets of paper with ease. My book has 230 pages, which means I should have made 12 signatures of 20 pages each to end up with an even number of sheets. The last signature had fewer sheets, so I added another signature at the end to make up a few blank pages for the cover, and for any correction notes, etc. These next pictures are an example using scraps to show the process.

With the signatures together in order I clamped them and glued the spine with a sheet of paper wrapped down the front and back an inch, using white PVA glue. Then I glued on a heavy card cover to the front and back sheets, but not the spine, and clamped it to dry between two boards. So far it is holding up and looks like a real book!

wrapping a strip of paper onto the spine to bind the signatures together

clamp and wrap the paper tightly, then glue on a cardboard cover later

A better job can be done if you wish to make a fine book, complete with cloth cover. The proper way is to sew the signatures together, but I didn’t bother since I just wanted a copy to read and edit, and didn’t wish to make a work of art for my purpose. If you research bookbinding you will discover there are many more steps that can be done to make a fine book, but for just a sketch or note book this method here will do well enough.

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Filed under Books, NaNoWriMo, Typewriters, Uncategorized

Tagged as book binding, home made book, making books, NaNoWriMo

November 25, 2019 · 8:35 pm

So You Want to Write a Book?

you will need one of these

47,000 words. 25 days. 50 hours. 25 cups of tea. 22 pages of plot notes. 93 pages of typewritten draft. 1 Olympia Traveller. 1 Hermes 3000. 1 Smith Corona 5 (Eaton’s deluxe). 1 sore back. 1 case of nerves. 25 beers (dinner). 10 swims. 6 walks around the lake. Countless hours of pondering the plot. All just to say you wrote a book. A book you will publish yourself and that will not become a best seller, win the Booker, the Giller, the Pulitzer, or the Nobel or a million other prizes. Even if you think it should, which is ridiculous, but so what? Why else write a g–damned book?

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Filed under Books, NaNoWriMo, Typewriters, Uncategorized, Writing

Tagged as NaNoWriMo

November 16, 2017 · 1:05 pm

Are We There Yet?

How many words should there be in a children’s novel? A scientific survey of one novel gave me the answer – 35,000. That was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl. If that is a good number of words for Mr. Dahl then it works for me. I confirmed this number twice by different methods. Being an estimator for 10 years, I have a pretty good idea how to count, so the first test was this: I counted how many lines it took to get to 100 words on a typical page. I extrapolated the count for the whole page, and then went to the last page and subtracted that number from the number of the first page to get the number of pages from the beginning to the end. Then I multiplied that by the number of words on my sample page. From this I subtracted the pages with illustrations and blank areas by quickly flipping through the book. I arrived at 35,000 words. To check this, I scanned another random but typical looking page and sent it to OCR. I exported that to my word processor and got the word count. I then counted every page with text, leaving out illustrations and blanks, to arrive at a net total of pages with text. Not surprisingly that gave me 35,000 words. Enough already!

My novel-in-progress stands at 25,000 words, plus the 1000 or so I just finished typing this morning. I have been reducing the gross word count by judicious editing, if not ruthless, so the 25,000 words are all keepers. The question now is, how to wrap up the story in 9000 words? Easier said than done. The writing continues apace, but it is clear that I will not hit 50,000, so there will be no “winning” Nanowrimo. Shouldn’t there be a category for children’s books? Oh well, you can’t win them all.

While setting out various events in the book I realized that my choice of a 1939 Royal KMM typewriter didn’t fit the timeline, so I have revised the machine to a 1914 Royal 10 instead. This has worked out better than expected for numerous reasons. I prefer the look of the older machine, which in my opinion would be more attractive to kids of all ages. Here is a picture I downloaded of a 1914 Royal 10 (thanks to sevenels). Now if I can be so lucky as to find one in a thrift shop for $25….

Royal 10 twin window

Here is the last page written to date:

Did I mention there is a pony in the story? It’s a kid’s book! There has to be a pony. Or magic, or both!

Typing Against Oblivion

Nanowrimo is here and as usual, I devised a cunning plan on November 1st. Of course we all know that the brain works in mysterious ways and so the whole thing was undoubtedly hatching in my subconscious before I knew what was going on. I had had several suggestions from my fans (all 2) that I undertake a children’s book for my next trick. Now that I am a grandpa I suppose the time has come. Regardless, the book is underway. It is being typed, as all great literature generally is, on a manual typewriter. It also features a manual typewriter, Royal KMM 1939, with magic powers. This is indubitably due to the fact that the word MAGIC appears on it. Also because my Mom used one when she was a typist at the CPR long time passed. I think it was a KMM, and in any case it had the same big Royal logo on the back of it, so I accept that as evidence enough for this jury of me.

Well, it’s going smoothly and I am enjoying the process. There really is no more gratifying experience than reading to a child, and this is kind of like doing that for a whole bunch of them. Hoping, naturally, that one day one child somewhere will actually read it! Maybe two or three… One minor glitch is that Nanowrimo has a 50,000 word target, and that is more words than most kid’s books. So I will try to write too much and edit it later. In actual fact – as if there are facts that aren’t (alternate facts aside) – I am using an entirely new method this time. I am editing as I go. This is often considered a no no, but I’m finding that it is improving my writing. I see so many things to rewrite that I’m avoiding repeating those sorts of errors whilst typing. Positive feedback loop through continuous iterative editing.

Lastly I wish to report that I am using one of my Olivetti Studio 44’s, mainly. I dug it out of the basement and have discovered to my delight that it is a pleasure to type on. It easily beats the vaunted SM9 or any other SM’s. I prefer the SF models anyways, and I have used mine a great deal. I now have at least 7 of these, from various eras. They’re all identical under the hood. But for now I am sticking with the 44. It has a soft touch and that makes quite a difference with muscle fatigue, believe it or not. There is very little recoil. Some folks don’t like the softness of Olivetti’s, especially the 22, but for me I appreciate that, for their gentleness on the fingers, hands and forearm muscles. Last year I got a terrible pain in my elbow after a month of typing madly, which may have been exacerbated by the snappy action of the typewriters I used. Some are worse than others, but the 44 and 22 are some of the softest machines you can find.

Olivetti – Underwood Studio 44 – made in Canada

EXCERPT:

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Filed under NaNoWriMo, Typewriters, Writing

Tagged as NaNoWriMo, olivetti studio 44

November 30, 2015 · 10:02 pm

Na No No Vember

Historically speaking I’ve always hated November. Everything seems to go poof and all at once it’s dark, cold, and generally cheerless. But NaNoWriMo came to the rescue. It gave me a reason to live in November! All I can say now is TGIO. I won, as they keep reminding me, by the mere fact of having written 50,000 words that will one day, with editing, be a novel. A short novel, to be sure. I do marvel at how they came up with 50,000 words, which if you are quick at mental arithmetic you will know requires 1667 words per day for 30 days. It just so happens that 50k is a magic number, at least for me, and I’ve now done it five times, so I can say that it has repeatable results. Is this statistically valid? Well it’s probably as good as most political polls these days.

Every time, as November wears on it always seems that the story I’m working on gets wrapped up around that magic number of 50k. Most novels are longer; that is my observation, but I presume they took longer to write. I’d heard that there are authors that write 200 words a day. And some that write a huge book in a month, a short one in a week. I guess these are the exceptions, based entirely on unfounded suppositions!

But my point is that having such a project, and it is all consuming, during this otherwise awful month makes November a little brighter, a little lighter, and a lot less depressing. Salutations to all of you who have tried, succeeded or failed. Rest assured that your book will probably not be read by more than five people, but so what? As the NaNoWriMo Pep talks constantly remind us, writing a book is an achievement to be proud of. Who knows why, but that’s what they say. I find it fun, especially now that it’s over.

On to more interesting things, like ducks.

On the 29th I was out for another walk around the pond. I have to admit that November has had more than its fair share of sun this year, so it wasn’t quite as detestable as some years. I was snapping away at birds, as you can see here:

Canada Geese, eh

Bewick’s Wren afaik

my friend Flicker

Tommy Towhee

Gus, Mildred and Corporal Cormorant

Murray the Hooded Merganser

Nothing rare or terribly exciting here, just the usual crowd. Until I spotted something that was definitely different:

what the??

It began to swim my way, and I shot a lot of pictures.

what is this?

Not something we see every day. In fact we never see this. I didn’t know what it was, except I bet it was a duck. It is a duck. It’s a Muscovy Duck in fact. A Barbary Duck even. But where it came from I have no clue. Maybe it flew in from Mexico, where it occurs in the wild, or escaped from a farm? I doubt I’ll ever see it again, but who can say. Maybe it will stay here for a while, in which case I’ll be posting more pictures.

Muscovy Duck

Let’s call it Juan – we live on the Juan de Fuca Strait. Or is she Juanita?

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Filed under Birds, Books and Short Stories, NaNoWriMo, Photography

Tagged as bird photos, muscovy duck, NaNoWriMo, November

November 13, 2015 · 9:55 pm

21,413 Words

By Typewriter

Week two and almost halfway there
Halfway pulling a tale from nowhere
Half baked plans with dubious inspiration
Now is the winter of our fermentation

Later to be baked boiled and spiced
Offered on a plate, sliced
Made tasty perhaps if not edible
With a slice of words incredible

The Photo Corner: The Flight Theme

All this seen in less than one hour:

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Filed under Birds, Photography, Poetry, Typewriters

Tagged as NaNoWriMo, things that fly

November 10, 2015 · 11:47 am

Write, Walk, Write; Imagine World Peace

Nanowrimo word count, day 10: 15000 +/-

Nathanguitars NaNoWriMo Studio

Bizarre coincidence department: I drafted the plot for this month’s novel two weeks ago. Not to give away much, but I swear this is true; I postulated scientists had figured out a way to penetrate the blood-brain barrier. If you’re not yet aware of the science news this week, some doctors here in Canada have just done that. If I could only use this power to do good in the world. Imagine no loud mufflers, no tattooed nose pierced clerks… and world peace!

But to think creatively one must prepare the body for the grueling task of sitting for hours, and this I do by regular swimming and a daily walk around the lake. It is the season for spotting birds, especially since there are so many fewer leaves on trees. I am diligently carrying my camera and telephoto lens, too. Here’s what I saw yesterday.