Confessions of a chat-oholic
My name is Tallulah and I’m a recovering chat addict.
I’m the girl who used to wake up and stumble straight to the computer before her eyes were even open; who would fall asleep with her phone in her hand, half way through typing a response. I’m a girl who installed eBuddy on her cellphone so she didn’t have to ever be off gtalk, who was one of MXit’s first subscribers and who purchased a phone with a QWERTY keyboard just so she could compose faster replies on the go.
You may well ask, doesn’t that just make me part of Generation-Y? Isn’t it a defining characteristic of the so-called Facebook generation? We want to be constantly connected, from the office to the car, from the car to home. Is this not normal?
As a proud millennial, I always thought it was. Since my first forays into Yahoo Chat as a 12-year-old, chat gave me so much and seemed to ask nothing in return. It is thanks in part to chat that I survived varsity, and it was chat that helped me keep my sanity when I first moved to the big city and was marooned in a not-so-safe bedsit without transport and precious little human contact outside of work. Chat was my drug of choice and it became a way of life. Like a drug, I grew dependent on it, suffered withdrawal when away from it. Like a drug, it carried a price. Just not one I was immediately aware of.
My first encounters with my drug were innocent fun messing around on the Yahoo Chat rooms (anyone else even remember those?). I was a social chatter, that was all. It was only when I moved to university that the true power of the drug took effect. I, an awkward nerdy teen, found solace in like-minded people on the campus chat room.
Having access to that chat room was like having friends constantly available, whenever I wanted them. Friends-on-demand. When I got back from lectures, there were messages waiting for me. When I was staying up all night working on an essay, I was not alone in my plight. When I grew hungry in the middle of the night, there were real people willing to offer food or drive me to the BP for supplies. The regulars on that chat room became like family to me (and some of them still are).
That chat room became an integral part of who I was for three years. And I became dependent on all it offered.
While that particular chat room could not follow me into the adult world, an IRC (internet relay chat) channel could. Independent of the university, some friends of mine had formed a chat room using an old chat server that could be accessed from anywhere.
My first year of being an independent adult was not a happy one and my only salvation was my drug. I would suruptitiously chat during work, sharing my anguish with virtual friends in far off places. As soon as I came home it was onto the phone (before I had Internet access), or onto the PC (when I got myself a dongle) to continue those conversations, to share blow-by-blow reports of what I was doing. (“I have 2 onions and some cheese, what can I make for dinner?” “You can make onion soup, here’s the recipe” or “I hear odd noises outside” “don’t worry, it’s probably the wind, but we’re here if you need someone to call the cops”.)
It was towards the end of that year that the dark side of my addiction became apparant. I started to realise that IRC was not just my crutch – it was everybody’s. Because that’s the nature of online, you see. It can be there when no one else can. The blessing and the curse. Online could be there for me in the middle of the night when no sane person should be awake. Online could be there for me when I was too busy studying to cultivate in the flesh relationships. Online could be there for me when I was in a new city and feeling isolated. And it could be there for the others when they’d been forced to move back home, when they were battling to come to terms with their sexuality, when they were depressed and couldn’t figure out why or find a cure, when the real people in their lives couldn’t understand them. When they were just feeling lonely.
Which in a way is wonderful. Previous generations never had this. Previous generations were forced to cope, were forced to come to terms with their aloneness, were forced to face their issues. They could not hide in the quasi-relationships onilne offers, in the camaraderie of strangers’ comfort, in the echo-chamber of emotion that wells up when so many broken people, with the shield of anonymity, come together in one space. They could not grow dependant on this barest of human touches the way we can.
An article in the May edition of The Atlantic speaks about how Facebook is making us lonely.
“We live in an accelerating contradiction: the more connected we become, the lonelier we are. We were promised a global village; instead we inhabit the drab cul-de-sacs and endless freeways of a vast suburb of information,” it says.
“In a world consumed by ever more novel modes of socializing, we have less and less actual society. “
There’s been a bit of a backlash to that article, accusing it of offering people a scapegoat for their own social inadequacies. A friend and fellow blogger, Zoe, commented: “This article is one of those that cashes in on the isolation everyone feels when they just couldn’t be arsed to go outside. “
Personally I think it’s a bit more complicated than that.
You see, being connected online is so beautiful because it’s so easy. It’s convenient and it’s available whenever you want it. You can mold this kind of relationship to suit your life, no matter how busy or strange. It comes without the usual complications of real flesh-and-blood encounters: no awkward silences, no judgement based on looks or past actions. You can be who you want to be, when you want to be it, as often as you like.
It’s no wonder we get sucked in.
The trouble is online isn’t only there when real is absent. Online, by its very nature, is always there. Even when the people who populate that world log off, we’ve grown used to the time-space distanciation that allows us to send messages in our time and receive responses in theirs.
With the rise of social media, we’re being encouraged more and more to form online connections. Online connections require time and energy like physical ones do. They require emotional investment. The danger is that as we pour more and more of ourselves into these online relationships we have less left over for the real deal. We also get less out.
True, in some ways the global highway gives us more than we’ve ever had before: direct contact with those we respect and admire, a running commentary on all the people we know, access to communities of like-minded individuals. It oils the cogs of real-life friendships and social interaction. It gives us chances at love with people we never would have known otherwise. Tiny, insignificant, people become giants in the virtual reality of their social networks. I am the last person in the world to deny this.
When used in moderation, the Internet is one of the most amazing things to ever happen in the history of man.
But when it becomes your life, when your virtual friends become your only ones, when you only have contact with your real world connections over Facebook comments and tweets, when you put every ounce of yourself into inane conversations you won’t even remember in a few day’s time… to the detriment of any kind of hobby, or self-betterment in your free time… I think it’s a problem.
We can’t blame the technology, no. If it’s guilty of anything it’s of being too awesome. Blaming Facebook for the way people use it is like blaming alcohol for alcoholism. There are plenty of people who use it just to have a bit of fun or to enhance their lifestyles. I know though that at some stage I crossed the line and instead of enhancing my lifestyle, being connected became my lifestyle. I was a zombie wired up to the grid with no purpose but to feed it.
I watch kids on BBM, WhatsApp and MXit, and a part of me worries. It’s that part of me my friends call “Mommy Tally”. It’s not my place to worry, I know that. At the same time I can’t help but think: if you are surgically attached to your phone, how will you ever learn to play the piano? Or knit? Or fly a kite? Ride a bike? Bake a cake? Build a model airplane? Climb a tree?
The image of those humans from the movie Wall-E floats in front of my eyes in answer to this question. They won’t.
And perhaps their lives are okay without those things, I don’t know. It’s not for me to judge.
All I know is that mine wasn’t.
It’s been over a year since I last logged on to IRC. Now, instead of filling my free hours with inconsequential talk, I’ve been concentrating on my hobbies and improving my skills. That’s not to say that I don’t still engage in the odd inane conversation – I’m still an active tweeter – but it’s no longer my life. And because of that, I now have a life.
Besides, if I tweeted as much as I used to chat, I wouldn’t have a single follower, which kind of negates the purpose of the exercise, don’t you agree?
The greatest gift my parents gave me
The greatest gift my parents gave me was hobbies.
My mother is an actress, but when she had me she stepped off the stage. She didn’t want to raise her daughter in the dressing room, she said. Instead, she started her own business working from home and producing a variety of crafts. In winter she would knit. In summer she would make beaded sunglass straps. In tourist season we’d do markets and stay up late into the night making stock. She was and still is always busy with her hands, always making something. Always creating. My childhood memories are peppered with occasions when she’d come bouncing up to me waving a new knitting pattern or some intricate beaded design that she wanted to make.
It was from her that I received a love of knitting. For years I would watch her needles clicking, wear the jerseys she made me, and get excited about the beautiful things she taught herself to create. I would sit with needles and wool and a scowl on my face and cries of frustration, wishing I could be like her, wishing it could be as easy as she made it seem.
And then all of a sudden it was. I graduated from knitting when I graduated from matric. That study time, in between pouring over history books and screaming at maths sums that refused to make sense, I sat in the lounge making a jersey and watching Dallas re-runs, laughing at shoulder pads and cowboy hats and shakey bottom lips.
Knitting was there for me again when my heart was broken; when my university degree seemed too difficult; when my first year of employment looked like it would end in me being fired; when my application for creative writing masters was rejected. Even when everything in life seemed to be going wrong, even when it seemed I was good at nothing else, I knew that I could do one killer cable stitch.
There’s something incredibly rewarding about pouring yourself into something and having a real tangible item to show at the end – something from nothing; the great alchemy of craft.
It was possibly this that first inspired me to draw, too. Although in that case it was my dad. My dad, with is fantastic imagination and library of art books, who would sit down with me as a very young child and take commissions.
“Draw me a princess!” I’d order.
I’d watch in awe as he sketched a beautiful woman in a shimmering gown upon the blank page. I wanted to be able to do it too. I asked him to teach me and he did. One of my earliest memories is sitting on the grass in front of our house on a hot Joburg summer’s day mixing colours. It was a kind of magic how the yellow and blue became green, how the green and blue became turquoise, how the colours changed as they dried, how the thick paint began to crack on my plastic plate palette as the sun beat down upon it. Even though he later lived far away and I only saw him for the long school holidays, we’d always at some stage sit down at the outside table – whether it be the outside table in Camps Bay or Port Edward or Fish Hoek or Sun City – and create worlds on blank pieces of paper.
For a long time I thought he was an artist. When people at school asked me what he did that’s what I’d say. I didn’t understand what it meant to be a stage manager or lighting technician. Whenever I saw him he was making art – cutting the translucent gels to fit the theatre lights so that colours danced across the stage, painting sets so that sheets of cardboard looked like house interiors. Years later he said to me, “I think you were right all along. I think I am an artist. What is art if not creating an illusion for the pleasure of the viewer? And isn’t that what theatre does?”
Theatre also tells stories. Falling asleep in dad’s lighting box and sitting doing homework in the dressing room when mom went back to the stage, I was shown all the elements that came together for a story. The dialogue of the scripts; the actions dictated by the director; the way that lighting can influence mood; how the way things are said can carry more meaning than the words themselves… and out of that was born my love of writing.
It is my dad’s theory that there was no help for it, considering how many times I saw the words of some of the world’s greatest playwrights come to life. I was doomed to either be an actress or an author (being trained as a journalist, does that mean I became both?). The truth is, however, that my love of story telling came long before the hushed audience and the rising of the velvet curtains. It came from the crib, when he’d weave tales of adventure and triumph for me. It came from those long days up in the tree with him, when a branch became a sailing ship and my teddy bear, a superhero. It came from the songs my mom wrote for me, the way she’d illustrate her domestic adventures, leaving no detail aside, no emotion unexpressed.
My parents could never afford to spoil me with the presents other children of my generation may have received: gaming consoles and computers, fancy rollerblades and eventually motorcars… but they gave me something much better. They gave me sanity and independence wrapped in their love.
For that’s what a good hobby is, really. It’s a safe harbour during life’s storms, an anchor when all around is confusion and doubt. An activity you love will automatically love you back and as long as you’re together, you’ll never ever feel alone.
Like this:
Geek confession: I don’t like Star Wars
Over the past few years something has happened. Being a Geek has become… cool. It came out of nowhere – or perhaps out of the Internet. All of a sudden “geek” seems to be a badge of honour rather than an insult.
Like all badges of honour, one has to earn it.
There are certain things expected of your average Geek. If you don’t know, for example, what Linux is and you can’t understand the webcomic XKCD you might just be called a poser.
Another one of those things that is expected of the genuine, qualified, Geek is an affection for Star Wars.
As you probably guessed by the title of this post, that is one Geek qualification I don’t have. I know it equates to sacrilege but I just can’t get into it. It’s not like I haven ‘t tried. I really have. I made the n00b mistake of watching all of them in the wrong order (1 – 6), then watched them again in the right order (4-6, 1-3). I tried to appreciate the insightfulness of the idea of The Force, the coolness of Jedi Mind Tricks. I tried really hard to like Han, to find the Wookie adorable. I loved the Ewoks… but in the animated series no one else seems to remember. I even had a sit-through where I watched ALL of THEM in a row because perhaps you had to see them one after the other to get a feel for it. All I got was bored. During Episode 3 I started making a pot holder out of some twine.
It’s one of those things I don’t speak about often, frightened I might alienate my fellow Geek-kind (my dislike of the sacrosanct Star Wars, not the pot holder although that might do likewise). I have a good laugh at the AT-AT dog suits, and the Wookie Slippers with the best of them, hoping that perhaps one day something might trigger something deep inside me and my inner fan will break free.
A while ago I saw this video on Cracked and it suddenly all became clear to me.
If you don’t want to watch it (it’s a really funny video so I suggest you do) basically what it says is this: girls have no one positive to identify with in Star Wars. This isn’t some kind of feminist campaign, it’s just the honest truth. The only Star Wars woman with any personality at all is Leia and even she ends up putting her hunky man before the Empire and dancing in underwear for a slimey mob boss.
I have nothing in common with her and since I have nothing in common with any of the characters in the plot I find it really difficult to care what happens to any of them.
Instead, my Geeky childhood was filled with Star Trek. And boy, was it filled with it. I loved Voyager from the first episode I saw (Day of Honour for any curious, and yes, I still know that). Now looking at it years later I can see why: Janeway was a strong, female leader filled with class. She was humanitarian and incredibly intelligent – exactly the kind of person I aspired to be. B’Elenna Torres may have had emotional issues, but she was a kick-ass engineer with her own strong moral code. In every Star Trek series there are awesome women I can and want to identify with: Deanna, Beverly, Uhura, Kira, Dax…
Of course I didn’t realise that’s what it was a the time. After watching Star Wars Episode 1 when it first came out, I was convinced that it was to do with the plot: Star Trek’s plots were meaty and filled with cerebral content for my young mind to chew on, Star Wars was “look at my fast car and BIG EXPLOSIONS”.
But now I look at the other sci-fi I enjoy: Firefly (“look at my spaceship and BIG EXPLOSIONS and my gun, I also have a big gun”), Stargate (“We go to alien world where we kick ass”), Buffy (not technically sci fi but bear with me -”We use childish language to express complex issues, have soap opera romances and kill demons”) – they’re not exactly filled with intellectual issue-wrangling are they? (Doctor Who is exempt from this list because it is). Yet all of them have… you guessed it, kick ass women.
Now it’s not the fact that they’re women that’s important in this particular case. It’s not about equal representation – nice as that is it’s a whole other issue. It’s about this:
Science Fiction and Fantasy work as genres because they are escapism – they give you the ability to visit other worlds, to go where no one has gone before. You can do things you’d never do in real life: defend your planet, go through a wormhole, date a vampire *ahem*. But your ability to go up there to the stars with the characters relies on something very specific: your ability to identify with them. You need to, for the duration of that book/movie/series, be able to put yourself in the character’s shoes – not always, mind you, but at least some of the time. It’s why Twilight works. The only reason it does in my view: because girls who read it get the chance to be wanted by supernatural beings.
So where does that put me and Star Wars?
Nowhere.
It’s not that Star Wars is bad, it’s not that it’s even committed some crime against my gender. It’s just that everything that could have made it magical from a purely non-participatory standpoint – the secrets, the lies, the surprises – are out there in pop culture already (“Luke, I’m your father” *gasp*). In order to appreciate it, all that’s left is getting into the character’s shoes and going on an adventure with them. And I can’t do that. The shoe doesn’t fit.
So I’ve finally accepted it. I don’t like Star Wars. I never will. I like the culture around it, I like the people who like it, but the beast itself?
Hand me my phaser.
Or if that’s out of reach, a ball of twine will do. I’ll go amuse myself elsewhere.
Like this:
Not a good look, Woolies
The Woolworths social media campaigns are often used as case studies, as examples of excellence for the rest of the social media world to work towards. It therefore came as quite a shock to me to see such a disaster unfolding on Tuesday evening.
I follow Woolworths on Facebook and usually in the late afternoons while waiting to leave work I have a browse through my newsfeeds. Yesterday this is what I saw staring up at me like something out of a horror movie:
"...this season's most essential shapes!"
Checking the comments it seemed like all Woolies’ other fans felt the exact same way I did:
“Absolutely shocking!! And we wonder why so many beautiful young girls are making themselves sick and starving themselves.. This should not be allowed!! I think it is shocking!!”
““Is Woolworth’s promoting anorexia. Its ad campaigns like this that make young girls feel inferior and starve themselves. This is not a good image to be putting out there. I’m absolutely shocked.”
“I agree with the comments below this campaign is off putting to not only the range but the brand as well”
Now one would think with such a strong outpouring of rage from one’s target market, Woolworth’s would remove the campaign and issue an apology? Right? I mean that’s social media 101. First you respond to consumers and tell them you understand, and then you take action.
Nope.
Woolworth’s responded to the concerns by explaining:
WOOLWORTHS SA Hi all, please note that this is not the first time we have received this response to this particular campaign. All related feedback has been noted and will be passed on to the relevant teams to be taken into consideration for future Woolies campaigns. We appreciate your concern and your taking the time to get in touch.
Come again?
So what you’re saying is
1. People have already reacted badly to this campaign and yet you’re still running it
2. You’re only going to take feedback into consideration for future campaigns, not this one.
In a comment a little further on the feed, Woolworth’s added that the complaints had been received a week ago. A WEEK?
So let me stop for a second to ponder something. Mistakes happen. We know this. Perhaps no one of sound mind looked at the proofs before you posted. By telling your followers you received complaints a week ago you are basically saying “Yes, we heard you. We don’t really care. It wasn’t a mistake. We like the campaign. We’re keeping it.”
Which is of course the way you had to do things in the old days. I mean when you’ve sent ads into magazines weeks or months in advance or booked time on TV and already spent a fortune producing an advert to run during prime time. Perhaps it still has to be the case in the stores – they can’t very well rip down posters, can they?
But social media is different. Every single person who comments about this campaign has the power to alert other people about it and about the fact that you are supporting eating disorders. Which means that every hour this campaign is up, more people are finding out about it. Online, reaction time is everything. It could very easily turn into a disaster for your brand in a matter of hours – as we saw with DurexSA earlier this week when its Twitter account was spewing sexist jokes.
The nice thing about social media is that you do have the power to halt a campaign half-way through. You do have the ability to pull the content. Which is why I’m incredibly confused as to why instead of doing so with this campaign that was receiving such strong negative feedback, Woolworth’s instead decided to REPOST IT. That’s right – screw the customer.
The customer who has a voice, and it is saying:
“From what I can see, the pics from this campaign were posted only 4 hours ago. If there was negative reaction previously to this campaign then why post it? Do you really think the money paid for this campaign is worth more than the negative publicity? Arrogance to the extreme!!!”
“WW are trying to milk this ad campaign using all channels, came out in print last week, now in social media, same reaction, the models are bad role “models” for the WW brand, what next?”
“WOOLWORTHS SA, your response indicates that you couldn’t care less what the consumer wants; you’ve bought into an abusive ad campaign and your’e going to run it till it’s over. Great way to send customers elsewhere. Great marketing.”
Oh dear, oh dear Woolworths. What on Earth are you thinking?
Reading between the lines, it seems that while your customer has a voice, your social media people don’t. They’ve been appointed to mop up the mess, but are not able to do anything to prevent it from getting worse and worse.
Someone there really misunderstands social media.
Which is ironic considering Woolworth’s head of online goes to many social media events talking about strategy. Perhaps she should spend more time teaching her own company?
Social media is wonderful because it lets your brand get direct feedback, in real time, from your consumer base. The whole reason behind having someone monitoring the account is that you can effect change when something goes wrong. Immediately.
The idea that these poor social media sods have to wait until long after the poo has hit the fan and then do a post-campaign debriefing strikes me as completely crazy.
So, while the Woolworth’s brand is suffering a gigantic blow it has the power to stop, instead it’s got its social media people gagged and bound behind their desks?
Not a good look, Woolies.
Let that be a warning to all of us in the social media biz – have policies in place for disaster management. And if the higher-ups don’t understand? Print out this example for them.
I guess Woolworth’s continues to be a good case study for us, ironically.
Google, what the hell?
Google made news headlines a few weeks ago by launching their long-awaited Brand Pages. However, it seems in their enthusiasm they went off less than half-cocked.
The Brand Pages look nice on the surface. Promises of delightful features like hangouts and separate circles dangle from the virtual branches like candy before the hungry children that are the world’s digital marketers. However, like the gingerbread cottage in the tale of Hansel and Gretel, something nasty lurks just inside the doorway.
Firstly, you need to be a person to start a brand page. You can’t start a page without a Google+ account and you can’t have a Google+ account without signing up for an email address or some such. There’s already been quite a furore regarding Google+ and the fact that you have to use your real name. Some people want to remain anonymous online. Google seems to believe that anonymity breeds trolling – or perhaps your data is just harder to sell if you’re blinky184 or sexylegs300.
Having to attach a Google+ Brand Page to a personal profile is less of a problem for small companies where the boss runs the account, or companies that have an internal social media person who doesn’t mind running the account as part of a greater portfolio. The real problem comes in with companies that outsource this task to PR firms or external digital marketing agencies. What are these specialists supposed to do? Tell their customers they’re not allowed Google+ Pages until Google changes the Ts&Cs? Fat chance. Customer will take business elsewhere, gladly.
Facebook initially had the same problem. When I first created a Brand Page on there, I had to link it to my own Facebook account. But – and here’s the issue – I could add other admins, and give them rights equal to my own, so that if I ever left, or was moved to another position, someone else could take over and even remove me. Google offers no such ability.
Which means… if I leave I take the company’s circles with me. The only way that they could ever get back their data is if I export it before I go, delete the page and they start an entirely new page with the same name and import it all again. And start their circles from scratch.
Google, what the hell?
I discovered this quite by accident – all I was trying to do was change my email address. Surely it should be possible for someone to change which email address is associated with Google+? You can change your email address on Facebook. You can change your entire username on Twitter. Why, Google, would you not let me change my email address? You can add an additional email address to Google+, but it can’t be a Google one. I’m sorry, Google, did you just tell me that I can’t use your product over numerous competitors?
Google, what the hell?
So then the only way of me changing my email address in Google+ is surely to start an entirely new Google+ account. Oh, but you can’t do that either. Not if you manage a Brand Page.
You really don’t get this social networking thing, do you Google?
Further reading:
BuzzMaven: No Multiple Admins in Google Plus Pages for Businesses – Seriously?
Mashable: Google+ Brand Pages Are the “Wild West”– for Now
Google plus help!! How do I change my primary email address?
Change Google Plus defualt primary account to another gmail account
I live in hope that this is just a temporary inconvenience and that they’ll role out an update tomorrow that makes it go away. Rumour has it they might roll out said update… in Q1 2012. So if I were to quit my job over December… hmm. It’s still stupid, imho, to roll out without that already in place!
Advice for new Wrimos
If you’ve never done NaNoWriMo before, it can seem quite daunting. I’ve seen a lot of talk on Twitter along the lines of “Should I do NanoWrimo?” “Am I crazy?”
No you’re not crazy, yes you should, (read why here).
It is a challenge, but it’s not nearly as impossible as it may seem at first. Here are a few pointers that have helped me cope over the years:
1. Embed yourself in the NaNo community
It’s more difficult to give up and it feels less like a chore if you have buddies doing it too. They say you need to isolate yourself from social life for the duration but you really don’t. NaNoWriMo can in fact be a very social time. Aside from the write-ins that will be organised in your area (you can find out about them on the forums), there is also an IRC channel and the forums themselves which are filled with people reaching for the exact same goal, willing to help you out and offer encouragement.
2. Plan
Some people prefer to skip this bit – they call themselves “pantsers” because they enjoy the thrill of flying by the seat of their pants. It has never worked for me. The first year I tried NaNo I failed because I thought that the plot would resolve itself in my head. It didn’t. I found myself getting hung up on small details and writing myself into corners.
That’s not to say you have to break it down into what chapter you’ll do on what day. Some people do this, but I find it takes much of the fun out of it. Just know who your characters are, what they’re risking, why they’re doing it and – this is the most important part – have some vague idea of how your novel will end so you have something to work towards.
3. Research before 1 November
Researching takes time. Hours of time. Time that, during November, you’ll want to spend writing. If your novel deals with complex subject matter, then get to grips with it before you find yourself getting stuck in the quicksand that is Wikipedia half way through paragraph 1 on 1 November. My dad is taking part for the second time this year. He started researching in April. (I, on the other hand, only started researching yesterday, so there’s still time!)
4. Have a “NaNo Book” or File
Keep this NaNo book with you from now until the end of November. Use it to jot down plot points, pieces of dialogue and ideas that occur to you in the build up to NaNo. During NaNo you’ll probably find they’ll pop into your head with increasing frequency the deeper you get into your story. Great ideas don’t keep to your writing schedule. In fact, they love nothing more than arriving when you’re in the middle of some other important thing for work or school. Having a book within arm’s reach that you can write them into will mean you have a handy reference when you need them later.
5. Don’t stress out if you don’ t hit 1667 every day
If you’re anything like I was, you’re going into NaNo thinking you’ll dedicate an hour or two every night to writing and you’ll hit your 1667 words before bed. Breaking writing down into little chunks is what makes the task of writing a novel in a month possible, they say. Unfortunately, in my experience real life doesn’t work like that. People go on having birthdays, work keeps on rolling in, you might get sick.
In reality my writing pattern is less like 1667, 1667, 1667 and much more like 0, 0, 5000 (that was a weekend), 50, 1000, 500 etc.
Don’t expect to keep to schedule. If you don’t expect that then you won’t feel stressed out when you fall behind, which you probably will. Just use the time you do have available to catch up. You have 30 days to catch up, that’s actually quite a bit of time.
6. Beware of week 2
The excitement will wear off. You will start thinking you’re crazy. You will wonder why you’re doing this. You most likely will think, at least twice, of giving up. Don’t. It’s called being “week twoed” and it happens to everyone. If you need to slow down with your writing, if you miss a few days, don’t worry and don’t give up. If you like, make a list of all the things that make your NaNo plot awesome while you’re still rearing to go now or in week 1, and use that to motivate yourself through the doldrums of the second week.
7. Write or die
There are some wonderful programs out there to help you. One of my favourites is “Write or die”. You type into a text box and if you stop typing for more than a minute it starts deleting your words. Talk about motivation! This tool is amazing for those sticky times when your cursor sits mocking you from the top of a blank page. Nothing gives your imagination a kick in the pants like blind panic!
8. Word Wars
Another wonderful form of encouragement, especially for the more competitive among us, is Word Warring. They have constant Word Wars happening on the forums and IRC channel where you compete for the most words in an allotted amount of time. Sometimes they do these at write-ins and you get prizes if you win, other times it’s just for the glory.
9. Avoid criticism
Avoid people who want to give you advice about your novel, unless you ask specifically for it (and when you do, be as specific about the problem you’re having as possible). The thing you have to remember is that your NaNo novel is your first draft. It’s not going to be perfect. The aim is to get it written. You can polish and fix it later. The most important critic to avoid, of course, is yourself. Your “inner editor” will have you second-guessing every line if you let it. One of the huge benefits of NaNo is learning how to shut up that editor, and it’s not easy!
10. Make it fun
The more fun you make the experience for yourself, the more likely you are to finish. Pepper your writing space with NaNo paraphernalia. Get a calendar that gives you daily challenges, get a schedule that calculates what your current goal should be, you can wear funny hats and even dress up to write if you want to. Last year I bought myself an advent calendar and stuck a NaNo wordcount over every door. When I reached that goal I got chocolate. It may be childish but seriously, who doesn’t want free chocolate? Laugh about the way your characters try to take over, keep a blog of extracts and funny things that happen to your characters and encourage your NaNo buddies to read and comment, have internal bets and competitions with them involving wordcount.
NaNo is not just about churning out a quick novel, it’s a festival of writing. Celebrate it.
Please leave any further advice you have for new Wrimos in the comments!
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I will be blogging my own NaNo endeavours at http://tallyfic.livejournal.com.
If you like, you can add me on the NaNo site: tally1302
I’ll also be tweeting quite a bit: @tallulahlucy
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Why I do NaNoWriMo and always will
Around this time every year I wake up with a flutter of excitement in my chest. There’s something in the air. It’s thick with honeysuckle and jasmine, the sky is a bright cornflower blue, birds are singing.
Yes, it’s springtime.
It’s also almost time for NaNoWrimo.
NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month.
It is widely said that everyone has a novel within them, waiting to be written and a group in the US took these words to heart. They figured that if one were to write a few pages every day for an entire month, and dedicate oneself whole-heartedly to the task, one would have a novel written by the 30th. It’s what they call the “seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing.” Out of this idea rose an annual international month-long festival of writing.
All over the world, including in your home town, people will get together to write novels this November. Volunteers, called Municipal Liaisons will co-ordinate meet-ups, hand out incentives, host parties. People who have never put pen to paper and published authors alike (such as Neil Gaiman) will hunch over laptops or PCs churning out 1667 words a day in a desperate attempt to complete a novel of 50 000 words by the last day of the month. Friends will compete for the highest word count, the forums on the NaNoWriMo website will come alive with writing advice and resources, and dreamers, with their busy schedules and other priorities, will finally have the much-needed excuse to follow their hearts.
You see, it’s not just about choosing to write a novel and sitting down and getting that done.
That you can do at any time of the year, alone. It’s about being part of one gigantic writing marathon, running towards the finish-line hand-in-hand with other writers around the world. Even if you don’t go to the meet-ups or chat on the forums or IRC channel, you will receive emails every week from famous published authors egging you on, giving you advice relevant to that particular part of the novel. Even if you don’t reach the word count, you have a legitimate excuse for trying, for putting writing first, for saying “I’m sorry I can’t come out tonight, I have a novel to write,” without sounding insulting.
I did my first NaNo in the middle of exams in my third year of varsity. I didn’t finish. I didn’t come close to finishing. But it didn’t matter. I had a taste of being part of something greater. The next year was my first true NaNo and it was one of the defining moments of that year. I met amazing people, I discovered what writing techniques work for me and, best of all, I defeated procrastination.
That’s right. After 12 years of school and four years of university, all it took me to learn time management was a month of novel-writing. I thought that perhaps it was a fluke, that I was attributing too much to the NaNo process and not enough to the fact that I had just completed what was essentially an Honours degree. Last year, my dad took part in NaNo for the first time, though, and he sounded like an echo of myself over the phone when he said, “It’s amazing, I never waste time any more, I’ve learned to get things done.”
Time management was not the only benefit I picked up from NaNo. Last year, a miserable year of my life that I would sooner forget, NaNo was the highlight of the year. Partly because, yes, the year had been sad and I was a sad individual at the time. For the greater part, though, because when I hit those 50k words at the end of the month, I had achieved something. In a year when I had otherwise been a complete failure, I had done something amazing. I had written… well, half a novel. It’s a pretty long novel. But I had hit that word count, I had reached my goal, I was not useless.
Another thing I learned from NaNo last year was the reason why I write. In the middle of November I was denied acceptance to a Masters course in Creative Writing. I would have expected to be put off, to have stopped working on the stupid novel and face harsh reality. Instead, I carried on merrily, realising what otherwise I may have never admitted: I write because I love writing and it doesn’t matter at all whether anything ever gets published, whether it all comes to nothing. The glory is in the process.
For the past three years Amazon’s CreateSpace has offered the incentive of a voucher for one free proof copy (plus shipping) of your finished book if you reach the 50k . Holding that novel, that you’ve written, in your hand, has to be one of the best feelings in the world. It doesn’t matter that you published it yourself, the fact is that your hard work has become something physical.
It was because of the desire to have a row of published works of my own on my bookshelf with covers I could be proud of that I started working on digital art, that I started taking art seriously. Perhaps I have not become and never will be a famous web cartoonist or renowned artist, but I have a new skill now and it feels wonderful.
If you are even vaguely considering taking part in NaNo this year, do it. Honestly, give it a go. You’ll never regret it. At worst you’ll give up half way through and simply go on the way you always have. At best… it will change your life.
And who knows, you might even write a best-seller.
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If you want to sprint along beside me this year these are my details:
NaNoWriMo site name: tally1302
Writing journal: http://tallyfic.livejournal.com
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10 small ways Facebook’s live stream could cause big issues
Sometimes I think that Facebook really oversimplifies the human condition, and underestimates the complications of our daily relationships.
I don’t want to be a hater. I really don’t. But looking at my “mini-twitter” this morning, on the right-hand side of my Facebook page, the following list just popped into my head.
Herewith: 10 small ways Facebook’s live stream could cause big issues (in no particular order).
1. Heartbreak
2. Jealousy
But what if you’re already with the person? And you see them being all sweet and nice to someone else? If you are a calm and level-headed individual you might be able to completely ignore this behaviour, but if you have even a single jealous bone in your body… drama.
3. Cheating
It goes without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway. If you’re cheating, this new interface is going to get you found out. Your SO can see everything you post to other people, including the other girlfriend who she doesn’t know. Be warned.
4. Betrayal
Human relationships are complicated. Sometimes you break up with a lover or a friend. Your best friends must of course at least pretend to be totally on your side. It’s part of their duty. But with the live stream you’ll be able to see every time they interact with your ex. They’d better not offer any words of comfort if they know what’s good for them!
5. Slacking
It’s known fondly as WABbing, that time of the day when you know you have work to do but you just can’t face it and so engage in work avoiding behaviour such as, say, blogging. Or going on Facebook. But do you have colleagues on Facebook? Is your boss on Facebook? Is a friend of yours friends with one of your colleagues?
You can see how this could get messy.
6. Beliefs
Our friendships are usually also quite diverse. I, for example, have everything from staunch atheists to the dedicated religious people on my feed. I have communists, democrats and republicans. What happens when one group sees what I comment to the other? You don’t need much imagination to see how this could spiral out of control.*
7. Surprise!
You’d better not try to plan any kind of surprise via Facebook. Chances were you wouldn’t do so intentionally. But you might slip with something along the lines of “See you Saturday” to someone who would be at a surprise party, or “I got Kyle’s present when I was at Incredible Corruption yesterday,” without thinking. Better be careful, Kyle is watching.
8. We don’t like you anymore
Now you also get to see just how little you’re needed in your group of friends. You can bare witness to every little discussion or private joke they have with each other. Again, if you’re not the jealous type I’m sure you’ll be perfectly fine with this. I’m sure.
9. Facebook envy
Next time you’re alone at home on Friday night, you get to be tortured in real time by all the marvelous fun everyone else is having. Sure, you could just not open Facebook. So why don’t you? Go on, ignore it. I challenge you.
10. The world is watching, and judging
The flip side of all of the above is that you, personally, have to be very aware of what you get up to on Facebook. Have friends that don’t approve of your wild ways? Have aspects of yourself you’re not proud of? Better make sure you stop being yourself on Facebook at once. Because they’re going to see when you comment on Bieber’s Fan Page with how much you love him, and when you join the group of local Twilight fans.
Of course you could see all these things before, but it would require checking hundreds of individual profile pages and honestly, who ever visits a profile page anymore?
I’m sure I haven’t covered everything. Please comment with any more you can think of!
(And if you want to remove the sidebar I hear there are a few ways of doing it. I don’t take responsibility for whether these work/are safe though, so be cautious: SumTips, QuickWebTips, EnBeeOne3)
*Thanks go to Richard (@Hyldrian) for this suggestion
Welcome to the world (of Warcraft)
Hi, my name is Tallulah, and I play WoW.
It started last month, when I was in Cape Town on business. I was staying with some friends. Peer pressure gave in.
“Once you play WoW, you don’t play anything else,” one of them said to me.
I should have taken it as a warning, rather than an exaggeration. For not only do you not play anything else, you don’t do anything else either. For who would wash windows and make the bed when there are monsters to slay? Who would watch TV and knit when you could be gallivanting across the Scottish Arathi Highlands to rescue a princess?
So a word from the wise: don’t go there.
(But totally go there!)
I consciously avoided Warcraft throughout my varsity career. I know that I have no self discipline at all. Avoiding World of Warcraft was not hard, as there were proxies and firewalls in place to make sure I couldn’t get sucked in. Warcraft on the other hand was big stuff. Seriously big. There were at least two DOTA matches a day on the varsity network – one at 12pm, one at 6pm. My friends played. My boyfriends played. I resisted. I knew that was all they did in their spare time, I didn’t want to fall into that trap.
And besides. There was homework. There were essays to write, and tutorials to go to, and lectures to treat myself with if I found the time. Once I moved out of res it was even worse – there was waitressing, and the new media specialisation and in the evenings on the odd occasion there was socialising.
But this particular visit to Cape Town, I found myself with no excuse.
You see, I’ve been integrated in the culture for so long. I was speaking in “lols”, “for the wins” and “fails” before lolcats were invented. I have covered stories on WoW – from internal politics, to new releases, to kids dying playing it. You can’t blame me for being a little curious. So I started a character, just on a trial account – what is the worst that can happen?
Click to read about two guys who died because of obsessive gaming
Click to go to video of girlfriend who deletes boyfriend’s account to save him from himself
Click to read about the guy who offers therapy for WoW addicts
…Yea.
Needless to say, I now have a paid account, three characters and spent the entire weekend playing.
I have nothing to say in my defense, or in defense of the game that has claimed lives, altered the world’s economy and ruddied the academic records of many… except this anecdote.
When I was in my early teens I read this sci-fi series called The Web. Set in 2027, it was based in a world where the Internet had evolved to be completely virtual reality. People would literally plug themselves in using special electronic suits and could interact with each other in a virtual world. They could be anyone, do anything. They could go to different areas to complete missions together, or just meet new people and socialise. They could complete tasks in teams for points, or simply explore for a more relaxed experience.
I don’t know if the creators of WoW read those books, but what they’ve created is exactly that – minus the suits. I used to think it was all about killing monsters and declaring war on other players using words like “n00b” and “imba” (it is, after all, called “war” craft). But that’s not it. It’s bigger than that. Your character has professions and skills to perfect (I spent a large portion of Saturday wondering around various countrysides looking for herbs for eg). There are achievements to earn (like becoming a great explorer), there are funny little characters (like the “crazy cat lady” who lives in a house alone with a pack of cats), and odd little missions (help the little girl find her balloons). It is an entire world where you can do or be whatever you like.
So yes, caution is warranted when approaching. Not because it is evil, but because it is awesome. When real life gives you lemons, you used to have to make lemonade. Now you can run away and sell them in WoW.
