Yesterday, I teased all of you with a picture of a simple blue composition notebook – this one here.
I picked it up during back-to-school time at Target because I’m constitutionally incapable of not buying some sort of school supply during that time of year, even though I have no current intention of going back (tl;dr, I have two bachelors degrees and a masters, Ph.D programs are stupidly competitive for a very small number of academic jobs in my field(s) on the back end). This blue composition notebook (and a second spiral-bound with a hot pepper and “Today my attitude is extra spicy” written on it that I have not yet decided what to do with) was my yearly contribution to the national back-to-school spending this year.
Probably in about mid-September, I started rolling the idea around in my head to use it for something in November. For the uninitiated, I did NaNoWriMo for twenty years – from 2003 through 2023 – and completed it about as many times as I didn’t. There are more than a few of my projects that were drafted or conceived through NaNoWriMo (or, in some cases, Camp NaNoWriMo, which used to happen in the spring and summer). The last couple years–since the scandal that eventually broke NaNo (and its leaning into AI based on sponsorship, etc.) and its eventual collapse, I haven’t really done anything for November, which for better or worse hasn’t been a bad move on my part. This year, though, I decided that maybe I’ll do something a little different.
Years ago, when I wrote What Angels Fear, I wrote the bulk of it longhand on looseleaf (with a green Papermate Flair felt-tip pen, for those wondering) and still have those handwritten pages somewhere floating around in my files and papers. When I was much younger, I used to do all of my writing long-hand, often instead of taking notes in classes where I…didn’t need to take notes (apologies to my college math and science professors). Back September, I got to thinking – what if I took November and challenged myself to handwrite something every day?
I still haven’t fully decided if it’s going to be something brand new or not. My instincts tell me that it shouldn’t be, that maybe I should just let myself work on whatever project feels best. I’ll probably decide by later today when I settle down to finally put pen to paper.
But the goal will be to fill the entire composition notebook (one-sided on the pages only; I don’t want to have to worry about selecting my pens based on whether they bleed through or not; I want to just use whatever feels right at the moment) by the end of November. Stay tuned to find out if it’s something new or a mix of all the things.
Happy Sunday, and welcome to November.
