Day 12 : write a 100 word novel in a week!

Sent on Wednesday (I didn't write one for Tuesday)

Day 12.

As we near to the end of our write a '100 Word Novel In A Week' competition and you consider the pages of your manuscript before you, many of you are probably surprised that you had it in you.

Don't be.

Republic attracts some of the most creative minds around, and a 100 word novel was probably a walk in the park. 100 words? You've written longer emails to clients before 9.00am, you've written longer creative briefs before a conference call, and you've justified outrageous expense claims with more words (and more creativity).

But spare a thought for those who haven't written a word. Spare a thought for those who thought it was some arty creative competition that they couldn't enter, spare a thought for those who thought the 16 hour days they do meant that taking 20 minutes out to write a soaring soirée on solitude was unjustified. Spare a thought for Jeff.

These people, these colleagues you casually call your friends and have lunch with (if they take a lunch break at all), these people are the ones who need your help now. Your tale has been told.

Explain to them that their story is as important as yours, that they have the words to tell it, and you would like to hear it. Hug them, caress them, kiss their minds. Let them shine in the light of the love that is Republic, and together we'll write more new age hippy crap than we know know what to do with.

One day we'll look back on this moment and say "Yeah, I wrote a novel, but you know what? So did Jeff. And Jeff was just a goldfish by then. But we were there for him. We were a Republic. We were Republic."

[cue "Eye Of The Tiger" by Survivor, dissolve to the unicorn, fade to black]


Funt - it may be a drop in the ocean, but it's our ocean, so we'll drop what we like and we'll drop it like it's hot

Day 3 : Write a 100 word novel in a week!

Continuing the 'Write a 100 word novel in a week' competition at work.

Day 3.

Funt is running a 'Write a 100 word novel in a week' competition. Imagine if everyone in Republic wrote a novel - perhaps we'd end being famous for having more unpublished novelists in one place than anywhere else. So if you've always harboured a secret desire to get in the Guinness Book of Records, open up word and get typing. It's only a 100 words.

If you're worrying whether 100 words even count as a novel, well, author Umberto Eco considers El Dinosaurio ('The Dinosaur') a novel, and it's only got a rather pitiful word count of seven:

Cuando despertó, el dinosaurio todavía estaba allí.
("When he awoke, the dinosaur was still there.")

If that counts, we think we're safe with a hundred. And with a decent editor, who knows; maybe they can cut it back to a publishable length.

Those of you struggling with writers block should take heart from Hu Wenliang from China, who wrote nothing but five lines of punctuation and is waiting to hear whether it is the shortest novel ever. So if you've drawn a creative blank, try resting your forehead on your keyboard and you might come up with something on a par with Hu Wenliang. Just don't expect to be swanning off to Ibiza* on us: we'll be using Microsoft Word to check word counts, and it might object.


Funt - not waving, crowd surfing

*a holiday in Ibiza is a provisional prize and is subject to change. We're sure Jane will be fine with it, but, well, we haven't asked her yet, and we might have to fall back on something we can buy from the Red Shop for a fiver. But how much is a place in the Guinness Book Of Records worth? You can't buy that sort of publicity. Personally, I think you should save some of your holiday allocation. Maybe not the full 25 days, but a long weekend is probably a dead cert.

**Who knew: Roy Castle, famous for presenting the 'Record Breakers', used to have a wicker basket off camera into which he would dive and take refuge while presenting the program because he suffered from agoraphobia, and they filmed the program in one of the BBC's larger studios.

Day 2 : Write a 100 word novel in a week!

My heart wasn't quite in this 'Day 2' of the competition email (band rehearsal the night before and three hours broken sleep) but you do what you can...

Day 2.

We're going to keep this email short, because if you followed yesterday's advice you have words in the bank and can afford to take today off.

If you've yet to start your hundred word novel, then there's still time to join the competition - closing date is next Friday!

And it should go without saying that we'll be accepting entries written in any language you're happy writing in. Don't worry that we can only read English and will run your novel through Google translate a few times (your language to Flemish, Flemish to Spanish, Spanish to French, French to German, German to Italian, Italian to English ). It'll be fine.


Funt - 12 steps behind the program, but with you all the way

Day 1 : Write a 100 word novel in a week!

My first inspirational email for the competition...

Day 1.

Like me, you've probably sat down and done the maths, and realized that today you need to write 15 words of your 100 word novel today if you're going to finish it in seven days (and have the weekend off). That may seem a daunting task given that you've also been worrying a plot, theme, and whether there are too many slides in your O2 segmentation presentation, but honestly: 15 words aren't really that many.

Instead of obsessing about the words, you might want to decide what to do with them, and a useful trick is to use them to introduce your protagonist.

Here is an opening line from entirely fictitious novel to inspire you:

"Ugly as sin, and with breath bad enough to turn a bus blue, Frank wasn't the first person that sprang to mind when she needed as shoulder to cry on."

See? Easy. We've introduced two characters for the price of one, and while our heroine may need fleshing out a bit, we now have Frank on board. And we've burnt through thirty words of our novel as well, which means we can slack off on Day 2 and hit the Westbridge.

If you'd rather leave the whole character thing for later, how about setting the scene?

"It was a bed sit fit only for the lowest of trailer trash looking to move up in the world on the cheap, and she knew she would have to work fast when she discovered the corpse in the dirt black bed."

Scene set, forty words in the bag, and fourteen hours and fifty-three minutes of the day left to do some real work.

So get the coffee on, remember not to spend too long sat at the keyboard (RSI and back pain and all that), bang out 15 words, and tomorrow we'll tackle Day 2.



Funt - it ain't easy, but then freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose

Write a 100 word novel in a week!

Launched a competition at work today: Write a 100 word novel in a week. I was going to whip a frenzy for a group NaNoWriMo effort, but the consensus was that turnout might be a bit low, so:

In November there is a competition to write a 50,000 word novel in a month. But that's November.

What we would like you to do now is write a 100 word novel in a week. Entries in by Friday 12th October.

So dig out your hundred favouritest words, and bash them out.

There's a prize, obviously, and while we can't tell you what it is, think a weeks holiday in Ibiza, then scale back a bit (massively).

Start writing. 100 words - it's less than this email (101 words)!


Funt - we love you like your mother, and your mother too!


small print (that doesn't count in the word count of the email above because I've only just thought to mention it):
We might stick the novels up on a website (if we get more than none), so sending your plot synopsis for a TV series you plan to sell to TV and retire on might not be the cleverest thing in the world. But then again, maybe you're cool with that :)

Tomorrow: my first inspirational email to keep things moving.

Writing blunders

Gearing up for NaNoWriMo this year, I love stuff like this article on writing blunders (c/o boingboing).

The worst opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels...

Couple of entries for a competition at work inspired by the Bulwer-Lytton site's "worst opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels"

I knew it was a mistake, but it was a mistake I liked making, and making mistakes was my middle name - when I didn't get it wrong (on purpose).

and

You know how it is when you wake up hung-over and handcuffed in the back of a car with no driver bouncing down the side of a hill to certain oblivion below, and you have a cigarette between your lips but no way of lighting it? 'No,' she whispered.

People (Abe) complained the last entry was two sentences, but I still insist it reads as one... ;)