This transcript was generated from an audio file by AI, and may contain inaccuracies.
Transcript
You know, you turned 40 and you're half dead now. Why don't you get off your ass and write a novel?
Sounds great. Hello and welcome to episode 127 of the Erasable Podcast. I'm Andy Welfle, here with my ERA Po co host, Tim Wassem and Johnny Gamber. Hey, guys.
Nailed it, man. That was great.
At the end of this week, hopefully by the time we publish, thousands of writers around the world will start the bananas endeavor to write a 50,000 word novel in just 30 days for NaNoWriMo, which of course stands for National Novel Writing Month, and hence my era Po Coho Shortening. I don't know what you call that, like, thing when you. It's not an acronym because you're using just like the first syllable of each word.
It's an awesome.
Graham.
Yeah. What would that be? Yeah, well, look that it's not really a portmanteau. A portmanteau is like where you're mashing up words, isn't it?
Yeah, so it's like a.
It's like a. It's like a super poor mantu.
Yeah.
This is homework for our listeners. Someone please find out what this is called. Look at the price.
Uber Portmanteau. Yeah, portmanteau.
Portmanteau.
Meta. Portmanteau.
Yeah.
Pronounced it seven different ways so far. So.
So. Well, I. I am not. I'm not brave enough to embark on NaNoWriMo, but Tim and Johnny are.
Well, you just finished a book.
I think you pronounced stupider. Wrong. Yeah, stupid wrong. You said brave.
So I think we're gonna spend our main topic talking about the strategies and tools and tips. And before we do that, we have some interesting kind of like, updates and refreshes to the show. But first, let's start with an old standby, tools of the trade. Tim, what are you consuming and writing with?
So I recently discovered. And is it. Is it pronounced scribed or the app scribd? Do you know what I'm talking about?
Oh, yeah, I think it's scribed.
And I still didn't get a sufficient answer from the Internet when I asked it on Twitter. But I'm not sure if I'm supposed to hate this or not, but scribed is like Spotify for audiobooks and ebooks. So it's like $9 a month. I just discovered this and has like everything I could possibly want. And for an audiobook junkie, it is like heaven. So I'm in a 30 day free trial and have been plowing through some audiobooks of stuff that I've been just wanting to read forever. And actually some of it, which, actually one of them I'm going to talk about tonight, is something I've read before, but there's a new audiobook out read by the author which makes it like ten times better. So. But yeah, so I've been listening to audiobooks like crazy on. On Scribed and also reading. It's. It's a cool combination. It has like audiobooks, ebooks, and then also people can like upload PDFs of stuff so like excerpts will show up on there. And also some blogs cycle through there so you can save them. It's just kind of like all in one reading and listening app. And I'm sort of smitten with it right now. But again, I'm trying to find out if I'm supposed to hate it. Like, you know how like Lady Gaga gets like a $99 check or whatever from Spotify or something. But I just.
Anyways, chances are if they. If there's something that's really convenient, there's somebody else who's paying.
No. Damn it. But because it's like, it's. Yeah. I mean, I. The way that I justified it to myself is that it was either use the library app and wait six months to read things.
Yeah.
Or use this. I would hope that writers would get a little more credit from this. But I welcome anyone on Twitter or something to prove me wrong and tell me that I am ruining the literary community by subscribing to this. But I just, I really love it. Yeah. Cue Harry Marks.
Yeah.
Yeah. Hello. Suddenly shows up on the line. But I've listened. I listened to this week. I listened to two George Saunders story collection. So I listened to Civil Warland and Bad Decline, which was his first one. And then Pastoralia, which are both collections and both haven't been on audiobook. I've been waiting for him to come out on audiobook for a while. And once 10th of December came out and really hit it big, was kind of like his big like wide appeal breakout, I guess you'd call it. And then Lincoln and the Bardo, he went back and re recorded them and he. He reads themself, which I think he's one of my favorite voices to listen to. It's just great. He just the perfect voice to read his own stuff, which I know sounds super obvious, but some writers that's not the case. He makes. He enhances everything that you listen to him read for sure. So I'd highly recommend any of these 10th December recording is really awesome. So I really like that one. But both of these early collections are. Both have a lot of stuff about fake theme park kind of things, which is kind of his specialty. Early on he would. Every collection had a story, I guess, or most, I guess several of them had a story that was based around this sort of idea of a sort of effed up weird theme park. One of them is called Civil War Land. And it starts out as this like reenactment theme park. But then you find out that there's actually like all this gang violence going, going on around and there's like gang wars between like the, the people in the Civil War Land and the people who are, you know, these gangs that are coming in and like screwing up the place. But then also there's ghosts all of a sudden. It's just so crazy. It's such a weird story. And I love everything he does. Everything he does is great. Pastoralia is like where you've got like all of human time and all the different areas are popular, populated by actors who are acting it out. And so the main characters in the story, Pastoralia are caveman and cave woman. But no one comes to the theme park. And the caveman is super dedicated and refuses to speak and uses only hand signals. And then the woman's smoking menthol cigarettes and hanging out in the back and totally ignoring all the rules. Super funny. Such good writing. I mean he's one of the best alive right now. I would recommend any of his audiobooks, but I listened to Civil War Land and Bad Decline and then Pastoralia and I have been watching just in the last couple of days, Paul Rudd's new series, Living With Yourself on Netflix. It's his first scripted series and the is the premise, which you get this in the preview. So I'm not giving anything away. And a lot changes. But he is this sort of dejected middle aged man who's like. He and his wife are trying to have kids and he's like depressed and hates his job and just kind of like an all around screw up at this point in his life. He used to be kind of king of his marketing firm and all this, but now he's just kind of a sort of a blob in the corner. But he, he gets this idea to go to this. His friend tells me he needs to go to the spa. It's $50,000 and he came and he woke up feeling like a new man. And it's changed his life and now he's like succeeding in all this stuff. But the series opens up. The first scene is Paul Rudd pulling himself out of a plastic bag in a grave. And you find out that it's a story of cloning. And so they botched the job and the clone is surviving, but also the original one, the clone is functioning and like living life and doing great. But the clone, the original didn't die like he was supposed to. And so both of them are alive and they're trying to figure out how to live with each other. And Paul Rudd plays both characters and. It's very good. Yeah, it's very good. I was really surprised. I was expecting it to be a little sticky.
Yeah.
But it's. It's excellent. So recommend that. And I am writing with a CW pencils baseball scoring pencil, World Series time hashtag lock them up. And I am. You said it. I am using a decomposition book. The little one I had talked about in the last episode, the small one with the cabin on the front.
Nice.
That is my NaNoWriMo planning book, so decided to use it for this as well.
Nice. Yeah.
How about you, John?
Yeah.
So I guess in prep for NaNoWriMo, I thought I'd read a novel that was probably not very good. So I read the Time Traveler's Wife, which was.
Oh, that's a good novel.
It was like. It was.
You sounded. You sounded like the mom in Bob's Burgers right there. Andy. It's a good novel.
He tried really hard,
I think. Like, it was good insofar as I really wanted to know what happened. And then I was like, I'm gonna read this damn book, like, really quickly. But then I backed up and like, I thought they were going to talk about free will. And they thought because they mentioned the term that the book talked about free will, but it totally didn't.
Well, that's coming with a PhD and like, come on.
And then I. I did the stupid thing and I watched the film, which was just really terrible. Like, I retroactively don't like Eric Bana and anything else he's been in after that movie. But it's on Netflix. Don't watch it.
I like Audrey Niffenegger. Like, kind of like as a. Almost like in like a Harry Potter sort of way. Like, she has very readable sort of like fast moving books. And like her. Her fearful symmetry was really good. It's really good.
Ghost story.
Yeah.
Yeah. I kind of feel bad for liking it. Like, I enjoyed this book, but I don't know if it was good. But then, you know, this literary Snobbery, right? Like, yeah, it was a really good story that was well told. So, like, that's how I feel about every.
Every Lee Child book that I've mentioned on this. I'm always, like, thinking the exact same thing. So you can. You can set yourself free from that.
If you believe in guilty pleasures, it's a guilty pleasure. But, yeah, it doesn't have to be guilty. It can just be a pleasure.
That's right.
Yeah.
And at the end, you're like, well, I read a really long book, like, really quickly, so yay, don't watch the movie. Like, the movie was just, oh, my God. Didn't even. Oh, God, it was bad. Like, one of the central themes of the book is sex. And there's no sex in the movie. Like, nobody in the movie smokes, even though everybody smokes in the book. Like, there's constant coffee in the book, which I liked. There's no coffee in the movie except, like, I mean, one cup.
You can just hear the, like, Hollywood producers in the background being like, no, no. If you listen to that, people don't want to see that.
If you want to see a better televised version of the Time Traveler's Wife, just watch Doctor who and they. They do it.
But on the other side of that, I read a book that Tim recommended, Black sun by Edward Abbey, which was super good and, like, just spooky. The whole book was spooky. The specter of the. I mean, it says in the back cover that the female lead goes missing. So the specter of the fact that she's gonna go missing is, like, there the whole time that they're having fun. I'm like, ooh. But there was one of those. I was really disappointed. It was so short. It's, like, sat down and read it and like, crap. Did you write a sequel? No, no sequel, but I. I recently saw, like, two good programs on, I guess, TV. 1. Did you guys see Press? It's on a Masterpiece Contemporary. I think they're airing it right now on pbs. But if you have the passport, the whole thing's in the app. It's just like a miniseries about these two rival British newspapers. It was, like, really, really cool. In the opening credits, there's a burning reporter notebook, which. Good stationary porn. Yeah, but it was. It was super, super, super good. And a really good ending. And then we just saw Season, which turned out to be season one of the Bay, which was on in the spring, I think, in the uk. I don't know which network it was, but Britbox bought the Rights for the US So if you have a Britbox subscription, you. You can watch it on there. It was. They bill it as, like, the Northern Broadchurch. I don't know if you guys saw Broadchurch with David Tennant.
Yeah.
But, I mean, it wasn't like that because she's not an outsider. But it was really, really cool. It was enjoyable. The nice little plot twist they give you right at the beginning.
Nice.
Yeah. I think it was only like, four or six episodes or something, but it'll be back for season two, so that's good news. And I am using a field notes sugar maple book, which is the orange book from the autumn trilogy, which I have reinforced with thread, which we'll talk about later. And I'm using a very, very matchy 2005 Palomino Orange 2B pencil.
Ooh, that's a good match.
That's like, awesome. Nerd.
Yeah.
How about you, Andy?
So Katie and I blew through season two of the Kominsky Method this weekend, which is the second season of this show on Netflix produced by Michael Douglas, starring Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin playing two aging, just Hollywood figures. Michael Douglas plays an acting coach, and Alan Arkin is, like, a retired Hollywood agent. It's really good. Just two really funny comedians talking about being old. It's pretty fun being kind of like. It reminds me a lot of. Did either of you ever see the Wonder Boys? The movie? Yeah. Really?
Wait.
Yeah, from the time.
I like the Chabon.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Michael, the movie based on the Michael Chabon book.
Yeah.
Wonderboys.
I love it.
Yeah. This is. This is sort of like 70. Like, what am I trying to say? Like, octogenarian wonder Boys. Like, okay, yeah, I would watch that. And outside of academia, more in, like, Hollywood. But it's really good. There's, like, what, six, seven episodes on Netflix. And we watched the first episode of a new show on Netflix called Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. I think on here before, I talked about a show called Ugly Delicious, which is a show about the history of, like, different kinds. Like, the cultural history of different kinds of food by David Changing, who's the head chef of Momofuku in New York. This is kind of season two of Ugly Delicious, but it's a different premise. He goes to different cities around the world with different celebrities and just kind of, like, experiences it with them. The first episode was him. And shoot, my mind is not working today.
Seth Rogen.
Seth Rogen. Yep.
I saw the image, but I haven't watched it yet.
Yeah, he went to Vancouver, which is where Seth Rogen is from. With Seth Rogen. And they basically smoked a lot of pot and walked around, ate food. There's going to be an episode with like, Kate McKinnon and. Yeah, just. Just like different celebrities. It's. It's pretty good. You have to. You have to be okay with David Chang. He's kind of a. He's kind of a acquired taste, I think. So Sounds like. Yeah. And I am writing with a yellow baron figure number two. Archer. Like their yellow and green one. Writing in my yellow American Elm Autumn trilogy. It is not matchy matchy, though, that Two completely different kinds of yellow. I just happened to pick up these two yellow things, so I think this is my favorite of the three, this yellow one.
Oh, yeah, me too.
Yeah.
Cool.
Let's launch into fresh points. Yay. Tim, how about you?
First one's quick. I got a text from my uncle who listens to the podcast, who I know Johnny you met. Yeah, my uncle Chris, who I know Johnny you met at. In D.C. a couple years ago. Yeah, yeah, he was. He's great. And he. He texted me the other day to let me know. And I will just totally admit that I didn't know this about this podcast and I think I will listen to it now, but it's called Nib section. But he said that the Nib Section podcast had gave us a shout out or mentioned us or something on there. And I also, I noticed that Harry Longbaugh, who we've been kind of like in similar circles or at least follow each other on Instagram or something, is one of the hosts. I believe they're from Australia, but it's a. It's a fountain pen podcast. And so that was also super satisfying to see that the last episode, it's called Care and Maintenance of youf Lamy 2000, was the name of the podcast episode, episode 55. And then in it under the what they're writing with portion, one of them is writing with a Blackwing 602 and had mentioned the Steinbeck stage and how we had come up with that. Yeah, that phrase. So, yeah, new podcast to me. I don't know.
Hey, Nipsection. Thank you.
Hey, Nib section. Yeah, I don't know how I haven't found out about you yet, but I will start listening now. And I've got 55 episodes to catch up, to catch up on, so. So, yeah, just want to mention that. And then the only other one I had was the new release from Field Notes in the National Parks edition, which I am a little pissed about. Because it's the best trio so far.
Oh, yeah, definitely.
So I have not ordered them yet, but it is absolutely the coolest looking one. I am dying to check it out. So it was Arches National Park, Grand Teton national park, and Sequoia National Park. And all three of them are totally striking, like, absolutely stunning.
But they're part of the permanent collection, right? Like, did we determine that? Yeah, we.
I don't know if I figure that out for sure, but I. I kind of had the feeling that, you know, they did the county fair one a long time ago and they haven't done anything like that since. This sort of big, ambitious new entry into the standard collection. And I got a feeling this is going to be it. And they're just going to keep adding to it over time, I really hope, because these are all unbelievably beautiful. And I. I just, like, I get the feels when I look at the Grand Teton one. I don't know what it is. I just like the.
The wolf. Perfect.
It's just like so striking to it. Just like, I have, like a emotional reaction to it when I see it. It's so cool looking, but it's a. Yeah. So there's. So it's called series D. So I. How Many is it? 59 parks. Is that what it is?
I think so, yeah.
And then some of them. Some have more than one poster.
Okay.
And then some of them look like they would not work for a field notes. So I wonder if they'll just do those last or maybe not do them. Well, I'm in a good pack.
I just can't wait for them to keep adding. And also, omg, the Steinbeck fan in me is just thinking, when the Badlands edition comes out, I'm gonna. I'm gonna poop myself. I mean, that's gonna be. So. That's gonna be. That's. That's a. One of my favorite passages of Travels with Charlie. Have you guys ever read that? Travels with Charlie Steinbeck. It's a. It's a great book. It's like his travelogue about taking his dog and his, like, homemade, basically homemade camper that he. He had, like, designed and put together for him. He drove around the country and just writes about it. But there's this great passage about going through the Badlands and how he was disoriented by the Badlands because it was actually creepier in the daytime than it is at night, which was the opposite of what he expected. And it's just a. It's a really Cool passage. So. So yeah, it's the new series D of the National Parks edition. Grand Teton Arches and Sequoia. It's. It's the best one yet. And I'm soon going to make an order and I will probably be making two of those orders. I'm using the Yosemite one right now, which is also, you know, just another gorgeous. Like any, any of those that have those sort of simple shapes on the, in the foreground of the mountains or whatever, the big things, and then have the fine detail of the stars and the cosmos and all that is really, really amazing. Yeah, they're doing. I really hope these stay and never, never ever go away. Yeah. But that's all I've got. What about you, Johnny?
Well, speaking of field notes, several people in several or not several, I don't know, one or two Facebook groups have mentioned that the center pages are falling out of the autumn trilogy notebooks, which I think infamously happened with the Two Rivers books. Half mine fell out. I don't know why. I mean, the staples are really tiny, so maybe that's part of it. So I stole some perfectly matching orange thread from my kids and like reinforced mine before I used it. But like, mine did not break, so I don't know if they're really gonna break us. I just kind of like was bored one day and did it. But I did a little post for my blog, but they do look like they're about to fall out now that I'm looking at it. And I'm just past staple day, so
I'm just before staple day. And mine look in this yellow one. Mine look fine.
That's so weird.
Yeah.
But I'm glad that I didn't buy 10 packs like I was going to. But yeah. And also on, I'm like totally self promoting on my blog. I got my oldest daughter to write a pencil review because she really enjoyed doing our intro a few episodes ago. And she's been sort of like hounding me like, hey, can I be on your podcast? I'm like, no, because we do it at night and you go to bed that day time. But Charlotte, Charlotte, for what it's worth,
you can be a guest anytime. If I had a say one day,
the summer summer series. We'll have you on every episode.
Yeah, that'd be fun.
We could each take off a week so you could just do it three weeks, three times. But I. We were walking home from school. I'm like, why don't you just write a review for my blog? And she's like, I was like, I'll pay you. Oh, okay. But then I made her do several drafts and, like, corrected them, and I was like, look, it says, be perfect, and here are some index cards. I want this written neatly. And then I, like, showed her, like, this is how we're going to scan them. And then we have to format the pictures and upload them to the blog and do all this crap. She's like, my God, this is a lot of work. I'm like, huh? But then she got paid, and people kindly left her nice comments. And she was, like, very tickled. Now she wants to do it again, so I might, like, go broke, like, paying. It's like, I don't have any money to pay people to write for the tiny little blog.
No one reads, like, Google Ads account
or whatever that, like, just pays for the host. Yeah, that pays for the hosting.
Yeah.
So it's free. I don't pay for it. But, yeah, that was. That was fun. It was fun to be, like, the editor who was face to face with somebody. Like, no, this doesn't work. Like, you know, she's a. She's nine. So I can be like, I know what I'm talking about.
They're like, no, wrong. Out. Do it again.
And Tim. Tim and I were joking in the Facebook group about NaNoWriMo, about these enormous books that we have from Leuchtturm called the Master Notebook. A four plus. That's just, like. It looks like a moleskin that's the size of, like, a small child, and it has heavier paper, and you could, like, you know, beat someone to death with it. Like, they're really big. So I'm currently, like, totally obsessed with this notebook.
It's like a cafeteria tray that you can write in. Yeah. Huge. Yeah.
I'm gonna carry around my snacks on it. But, yeah, I mean, it was. I mean, I didn't pay for it, which was extra nice because they're not cheap, but they are really cool books. So I'm flirting with using that for NaNoWriMo, which. Talk about more later.
What kind of ruling does it have?
Typing. They do all the rulings. Mine's lined, but they have dot, blank, grid, and line. And they also come in blue. I think they used to only come in, like, red and black, but they come in blue. I think they come in four colors now. But, like, man, loicturm makes some cool stuff. And the extra paperweight is very nice, and I wish I had it when I still worked at the university, because the pocket holds a four pages which is awesome.
That is nice.
Walking around with pages falling out of my notebooks all the time. That's all I have. How about you, Andy?
Well, I just have one really quick personal update for FreshPoints and then some just announcements and stuff about the show. First, next week I'm going to be in Los Angeles at Adobe Max, which is the big Adobe kind of like creative convention where they talk about new releases of the software and there's a bunch of vendors and illustrate graphic designers and web designers and it should be really fun. There's going to be 30,000 of my closest friends and Adobe customers there. So I know that we have. We have a lot of, you know, designers and creatives in the group. So if you are going to Adobe Max, let me know. I would love to meet up. Maybe we can do some sort of a little, like, you know, stationary meetup. There's already a couple of field notes, field nuts, people that are going to be there. And Aaron Draplin is going to have a booth there, so.
Jealous.
Yeah. Come to la. I'll sneak you in. We can pretend you're a caterer, if you don't mind wearing like a bow tie.
Emotional support co host.
My emotional support co host.
I'm a very good cuddler and I make very good coffee.
That is the emotional support co. That is the show right there. Cool. So, yeah, that's going to be lots of fun. Big announcement. This is something that has been a long time coming on this show.
Long time.
I think we talked about this when we first started talking about the show, but we just never made it happen. And that is that we have a Patreon. Yay. We sort of realized that we wanted to. We want to put some, like, you know, rigor to this show and actually, you know, try to make sure that we have, you know, people who want to support us, you know, financially as well as, you know, emotionally and, you know, with your ears, I guess. So come on over to patreon.com erasable. We have three different levels to, you know, to allow you to support us, which I guess is. Sounds like a weird thing to say. We'll get better at pitching this thing to you guys, I swear. We have a $2 a month package which we're gonna. We're gonna be releasing regular extra dark episodes. If you've listened to the show before, you know that we've done one with some of the CW pencil ladies about Gilmore Girls.
Yeah.
And Tim's obsession with Kelly Bishop.
Yep. Tim. Tim. So we'll give you A special feed just for episodes like that. And we'll do a little short, little monthly email newsletter, send you a little sticker and a handwritten note. We also have a $5 a month special which will get you those, plus kind of an automatic subscription to Plumbago magazine. So for those of you who have, you know, asked for some, some way to make sure you get Plumbago, this is a good way to do that. And then we have a $10 a month special stage, which, you know, we're going to give you a shout out at the end of each episode. We already have a $10 a month member, which we haven't even announced it yet. Thank you, Chris Jones.
Thank you, Chris.
Well, thank you again at the end, Chris. And then maybe some like some special erasable swag each year, like a T shirt or a notebook or something like that. And then some other cool stuff we're, we're thinking about maybe like a curated pencil pack with some of our favorite, some of our favorite pencils, the pencils from the Pencil of the month, which, which we'll announce here in a second. Some stuff like that. So go to erasable.com, excuse me, patreon.com erasable if you can. We would love your support. This will keep a show going. We, we. Our goal is to break even with, with web hosting. Anything beyond that is amazing.
So, yeah, I would say for, for years this has been, and this sounds like a cliche, but it's like, definitely true for this podcast. It's been a labor of love. It's just like something we just love to do and we've done it. That's why we started out by saying we wanted to do this, but then it just kind of fell into the background because we just enjoyed doing it and we're just moving forward and it just kind of kept getting pushed back and kept getting pushed back, but it's, you know, we've gotten to a point where we want to. We're so thankful for all the people who listen to this podcast and for the people who are in our Facebook group. And we really want to make it better. And this is one way that will really help us make it better, because it can, you know, help us with funding some, some new ideas, some new projects that we, we've talked about kind of behind the scenes, which we can't share now. But, you know, some, some cool new avenues that the podcast can explore, including more, you know, things like live episodes where you can meet up, but also some other stuff which I'm not going to mention now, but it's. It's just really such a tease.
I know.
I'm so sorry.
Yeah.
And only one way to find it.
Yeah.
Yeah, we appreciate it.
We started out the podcast, you know, pretty strictly every other week, and if one of us couldn't make it, we would just, you know, find another third or just go without them. So we sort of stopped doing that for a year or two. So now we. We all have calendar entries for every other Monday. So, like, being, you know, beholden to Patreon supporters is a good push. Yeah. Every two weeks.
Yeah. So go on. Go on, Tim. Sorry.
Oh, sorry. Last thing I was gonna say is, as the podcast evolves, we also are looking forward to having some of you who are, you know, you know, Patreon supporters who can give us some pretty direct feedback and can. Can help us come up with ideas of how we can make the podcast even, you know, you know, better for. For everyone or some. Some new ideas to. To keep it going. I mean, 127 episodes is a lot of episodes. I would say that's about 103 or 102 more than I thought we would end up making. When we started, just, it just seemed like such a. I mean, you know, we're all passionate about the topic and love talking about writing and love pencils and love talking, you know, just. Just talking to each other because we really enjoy having the chance to do this with one another. But this is a. Yeah, I just think kind of a necessary next step in letting the podcast grow into something better for everyone.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
So, yeah, we'll. We'll turn out to be too, you know, pitchy selly of this, but we'll definitely mention it every week. If you go to patreon.com erasable you can see more about those member levels and you can, you know, give us your support.
We would.
We would love it to keep on going. Cool. Which brings me to the thing that I mentioned briefly is we're going to have a new segment called Pencil of the Month. We realized that we did this early on. If you listen to some of our early episodes, we had a pencil of the episode where the three of us would try out the same pencil and just talk about it. We realized it'd be really fun if we had something that was a little bit more interactive. Generally our episodes, one comes out toward the beginning of the month and one comes out toward the middle of the month because it's bi weekly. So we were thinking it'd be fun if like, you know, the first episode of the month, we taught we bring up a new pencil, and on the second episode of the month, we actually talk about how it went. So this is the first episode. Let's just say it's the first episode of November. I think it'll come out maybe like a couple days before November 1st. But in honor of the World Series, we are going to try out the CW Pencils baseball scoring pencil, which we've talked about a little bit before. So. Yeah, so go to cwpencils.com and buy the baseball scoring pencils, if you don't have some already, and try it out along with us. Give us your feedback, and we'll be sure to incorporate that into our next episode's discussion of it.
Cool.
Whoa.
Should we start in the main topic, guys? Sure. All right, so today, our main topic, we're going to talk about NaNoWriMo. I think that most of you who listen to the show should know what NaNoWriMo is, but if you don't, it stands for National Novel Writing Month, which began in 1999 as a daunting way to challenge yourself, which is to write 50,000 words of a novel during the 30 days of November. So. So I'm not quite sure. Is that what, 1500 words a day?
1660,000.
Yeah, that seems like an important year. It sounds like an important year.
Yeah, I'm making that up. 1666.
I'll figure it out. Go ahead.
So it's also, interestingly, NaNoWriMo is a nonprofit organization that supports writing fluency in education. And what's really cool is Chris Beatty, the founder of NaNoWriMo, lives in San Francisco and works at Dropbox. I've met him a few times.
Awesome.
Be separate from the context of NaNoWriMo. But, yeah, it's really interesting. It's for. Yeah, it just tracks words for writers. There's an app in the way that fitbits tracks steps for walking. So it's a real time event, which means that there's volunteers all over the world who coordinate communal writing sessions and foster community and partner with libraries and coffee shops, et cetera. So in this case, though, we have a little community of our own. That's Tim and Johnny are going to be embarking on this. So I think last year we interviewed Les, didn't we? We talked to her about NaNoWriMo. So we didn't actually do any legwork to see if anybody in our community is actually jumping into this, but we have our two hosts doing it. So I'm interested really in you Know, like, my biggest question is, why? What are you thinking? Why would you take such a.
What are you.
Such a bonkers plunge is to try to write 50,000 words of a novel in a month.
Geez, dad, come on.
Your busy schedule. Jim, let's start with you. Why the heck are you doing this?
So I feel. This feels especially crazy to me. My life is pretty busy right now with. There are a lot of changes at my school, a lot of new stuff going on, a lot of new. I'm working on, like, new curriculum for my class and all this stuff, and just having little kids, it just feels insane. But I was actually kind of pushed over the edge by this thought, which was. I've always. I've said this for. For over a decade that days when I write are better than days when I don't. I always feel at the end of a day where I've gotten some writing done, I always feel like myself. I feel more like myself on those days. And it's you. You fall into these patterns in adulthood where. And I shouldn't be discriminate to like, younger people because, like, I mean, high school life for. For my students who are going to be doing NaNoWriMo with me this year is way more. Is way busier and way more complicated than when I was in high school. And I totally acknowledge that. But. But the days when I'm able to sit down and get some. Something on paper, whatever it is, I feel more satisfied. I feel, like I said, more like myself than I do. So I. I hesitate to say that I'm going into this year anticipating that I won't write 50,000 words, but I understand. I think that's the whole idea of it. I mean, I feel like NaNoWriMo is all about arbitrary, crazy goals, but that's how I'm approaching it. I'm approaching it with the mentality that I'm better off trying than not trying for myself, because I've got ideas I'm kind of. I'm actually writing this year. I'm writing an idea that has been living in my head for so, so long. And I think on take note, they were talking about this kind of idea. I think Ted was talking about the idea that he's working on is something that's just been kind of swirling around in his head for a long time. It just needs to get out. And that's kind of how I feel. I need to eject this from my mind. And NaNoWriMo seems like a really good way to get this idea out of my head. So that I can spend some time editing it and working on it. But it's an idea I'm really serious about. An idea that I really like that I just will absolutely not go into right now because of common sense for writers. But, yeah, I guess that's just sort of my. That's my ethos going in. I am happy when I write, and NaNoWriMo seems like a great, just kind of insane goal to get me on that path for the next month and then hopefully just keeps going. Yeah. And 1667, there was the first blood transfusion between humans.
So your blood and your sweat and your tears are going to be transfused into this novel.
That's why it's 16.
What about you? What are you thinking?
Well, I don't want to make fun of my own problems, but just a little bit of I hate myself involved here. Let's do it.
A little masochism.
Yeah.
I'm only happy when it rains.
Little masochism never hurt anybody.
I don't know if I've talked about this on the podcast before, but I majored in. I majored in philosophy because I chickened out of majoring in writing, which is what I went to college to do and why I went where I went. But, you know, you get to college, you're like, oh, you guys write poetry? Oh, no. Like, I'm not so individual.
What.
What's interesting. I guess I'll major in philosophy. And like, you know, they were at my 20s, but this is a good chance to, like, do the thing I much. I would have much rather done with my educational years. Like, I used to write a lot of poetry. I don't do that anymore. So, like, you know, it's nice to step out of, I don't know, the kind of mentality where you think the time traveler's wife can't be a good book because it was just enjoyable.
Yeah.
You know, it wasn't philosophically satisfying, so it was stupid. But, like, you know, that's. You're going to reject most of the world with that kind of thinking. But, yeah, it's like Tim says, my wife has remarked on several occasions that my mental health seems to improve during NaNoWriMo. Like, markedly. Like, oh, I mean, you know, I don't know if other people can. I can't maintain that sort of momentum all the time. I would lose it. And like, you know, by December, I'm like, wow, I'm really brain dead for a couple weeks.
Yeah.
And I mean, we'll talk about this more like, you know, cramped up and, like, in physical pain. But, yeah, it's a good, like, hey, you always wanted to be a writer, and, like, you know, you turned 40 and you're half dead now. Why don't you get off your ass and write a novel?
Sounds great. That's a family joke.
I'm like, for motivation, like, the impending death.
Yeah. I'm like, I'm half dead if I'm lucky. So, like, I've read a dissertation so I know I can write something that long and be way more fun than a dissertation was. So I've. I've. I think I bailed twice because I had really young kids and I only made it to, like, 35,000. But all the other times, I, you know, beat my head into making it on the last day to 50,000. So hopefully we could repeat that, right?
That you. The insane sentence that just came out of your mouth. I only made it to 35,000.
Like, that's a lot.
Failing Nanowrimo by 15,000 is still more productive than any other writer in the world. You know, for the most part. For most writers in the world. So, yeah, that's.
Yeah. One year I decided I would do short stories, and that's a really bad idea because you're like, oh, I have to come up with five stories now.
That's interesting, because my. I'm the. The. The path I'm taking. Have you guys ever read A Visit from the Goon Squad? Okay. Jennifer Egan? It's. I'm kind of. My idea is kind of modeled after that, which is a sort of a bunch of interlocking short stories with, like, one through line that sort of comes and goes throughout all these stories in some fashion. So I'm actually. I'm actually just like you. I'm kind of working in short stories as well.
Yeah, well, that. That is perfect. Perfect segue to my next question, which Tim, you just answered. But, Johnny, are you willing to talk about your project for this year?
So NaNoWriMo starts in four days, and I don't actually know what I'm gonna write about, which happened last year. I think that happens every year. But I'm toying with the idea of writing the adventures of a mentally ill person who is pansexual, called Fruitcake. But I realized that I could offend a lot of people, myself included, but also don't know what exactly those adventures will be like.
I can guess.
Yeah. Last year I wrote about time travel, so this year, I want to write about something a little more linear because that was just wacky. But, yes, I mean, you know, something about people approaching middle age or in the middle of middle age and, you know, existential crises. Those are. I like the. I like stories like that.
Yeah, so you're gonna. Yeah, so you're gonna. You're both creating an entire world within a month.
What. What is your.
What does your prep look like? How are you. How are you getting ready? T minus four days away to. To start this? How about you, Tim?
I'm trying something new this time. I haven't done NaNoWriMo in a couple years, but this year I am. So I. I've just been reading Gatsby with my students and Gatsby is this sort of tightly constructed novel of nine chapters. You know, act one is act. Act one is three chapters. Act two is three chapters. Act three is three chapters. When Daisy meets Gatsby, it's right in the middle of chapter five. It's just like a perfectly designed novel. So I just had the number nine in my head. So I basically have tried to lay out nine story ideas and I think fortunately all of them kind of blend enough that if things change, it's not a big deal. And what I'm trying, the new thing that I'm trying is that I have counted out 30. How many days are there in November? 31.
30 days.
So 30. It was 30 note cards. So I've got 30 index cards. And you're writing in such a fever that I figured if I could just get something on 30 separate note cards, any sort of idea that I could make that work for a day. So, yeah, I'm going to work through a note card a day and just kind of like whatever's on this card I'm going to tackle. I might even like, if I have time in the next couple of days, I might go back and jot in some sort of extension ideas, like if you've got extra time. Because I don't want to move on to the next card because I don't want to. I just want to live in within the realm of that three by five note card. That's really interesting. That's the. That's how I'm trying to kind of constrain myself. So I hopefully I get some time in the next couple days to add to those cards. But I figured that would be a really, for me, that'd be a really helpful way to propel myself forward to always know that tomorrow there's gonna be another card. So don't worry about today because tomorrow there's gonna be a brand new card with new Ideas on it.
That's awesome. How about you too, Johnny?
So you, have you guys seen A Beautiful Mind? So do you remember when you're gonna
go into a shack and cover it? Newspapers.
His, his roommate comes to get him at the library. He says, you know, when did you last eat? Blah blah. And he's like, you have no respect for cognitive reverie. Like that's, that's usually my, my, my approach. I'll like, you know, go for a walk with a notebook in my pocket and come home and drink like four cups of coffee and just sit about writing and something will pop out. I'm like, oh, I'm gonna write about this. Usually what happens all the years that I finished it, that's what, that's how I got the idea. So I'm really cutting it close. But I think last year, or not last year, the year before, I didn't know I was writing about that day. I just kind of sat down and started writing in a notebook. Like okay, here's a character. I got it ready by this for a month. Oh crap. But yeah, I guess my, my prep is just get caffeinated and take a walk. Get caffeinated again and scribble.
See what comes out. Yeah, it's good.
I mean like it takes a lot, a lot of coffee to get me hyped up. So yeah, it's, it's, it's a, it's more of a to do than it
sounds like get ready Starbucks. Everybody start, start investing in Starbucks stock now.
Yeah, like, I mean on a typical day, like Sunday, I, I left one coffee shop and walked right to another coffee shop.
So this is, this is a podcast about, about analog tools. So Johnny, I'll start with you. What tools will be using this year for your 1667 words a day.
So either I'm going to use this giant Leuchtturm book that I was talking about earlier and either just say like, you know, here are three pencils, use these. Or you know, here are three gel pens. This is what you're using. Or I might use my Chromebook, but my typing speeds dropped a lot since I left the traditional workforce and do everything on a phone. So I don't know if that's going to work out. But Chromebooks are, you know, they're light, they're cheap and they have 10 hour batteries. Yeah, it's kind of, you know, I wish this was around a couple of years ago.
Perfect writing machine.
Yeah. Either a giant notebook or um, a Chromebook.
Tiny laptop. Yeah.
Or a tiny little Chromebook coupled with pocket notebooks.
Nice. How about you, Tim?
I have decided to. To definitely type this year. I joked with Johnny about using the giant notebook on Facebook and basically as soon as I sent that, I was like, no, no, no, I'm not. I'm not doing that. No, nevermind. But I just, I. This idea in my head is something that is. This is sort of an extreme thing to say, but it's like this idea is more important to me than pencils. Like, I've. I've been thinking about this idea.
You're fire.
I've been thinking about it for so long and have wanted to do it for so long that any sort of like, arbitrary ideal that I have about writing tools just kind of goes out the window and I just need to get it down as fast as possible so that I can move on with my life.
Yeah.
So I am typing it, I'm typing it on my Chromebook and I've got the app that I've talked about before. And seriously, anybody out there who has not heard of wavemaker, you need to find it, like immediately. It is a free. I mean, I'm just gonna go ahead and call it a clone of Scrivener. It's simplified. It's not as complicated. It's a simple version of Scrivener. Um, you can. There's a web version, but also there's a free app that you can get on a Chromebook. And I would. If you check it out, you're gonna love it.
How is this free?
It's. It's Patreon supported, but it's just like cool guy, the guy who did it. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna look up his name, but like, it's an. I believe he's in England. He. Yeah. So he designed it and definitely seems like he just did it because it was something that he wanted to do. You know, Ian Wood, I think is his name. It's a. Yeah. So it's.
He.
He created it. It is definitely a simplified version of, of something like Scrivener, but I absolutely love it. And it's on Patreon. Like you can download it for free. The app's free. It syncs with Google Drive and you can. Your novel, you know, by chapters and all these million different things. There's all these different planning tools. It's really incredible. So if you have a Chromebook. Absolutely. You should get wavemaker for this and then support them. Support Ian on Patreon. I support him on Patreon. He's got a $2 a month and five dollar a month plan, which is just. I mean, there's nothing. Yeah, right. So he's got, he's got 37 only. He only has 37 patrons on there. And I think the service that he's given to the writing community is pretty staggering. Especially when you look in and you see all the templates that he's made and all the, like, some of them incorporate like three act structure and it gives you like an overview of what should go into every scene that you're writing if you want to be that rigid or you can start fresh. And it's got the Snowflake method and it's got everything. So, yeah, I'll be using. So I'll be using that. I'll be using wavemaker on my Asus Chromebook. And my planning is all going into. I've got sort of like two pocket notebooks going now, which doesn't make any sense, I will admit. But the. I think most of it will live in the decomposition notebook I talked about with the cabin on the front. But I also have a National Parks field notes that has some ideas in that I need to. That I need to transfer over. And I fully intend to type everything. It's like one of those things where I would totally say that I write better when I'm writing by hand, but I feel a genuine sense of urgency, not like a rushing feeling or like I'm being impatient, you know?
Yeah.
It's just like I feel this impulse to just go as fast as I can. And I could totally see myself writing my. My November draft of this novel, getting to the end and then going back to the beginning for the next year and writing the second draft by hand over again. Like, I could totally see that happening. But I know myself and I know that if I blow through NaNoWriMo and write it all by hand, I'll never type it up just because I'm so busy. So I want to, I want to have those words on the page. So anyways, I. That's what I'm going to use. And I feel really good about my setup this year with, with the note cards and with wavemaker. And I just, I'm really excited about this year.
I am going to try that app.
Yeah, but you're right. Every.
Every time that I've ever written it, I don't even know where they are, let alone have typed them up. Like I found one this weekend. I'm like, oh, this is a novel I wrote. It's sitting in a pile.
What a crazy Thing that. What a crazy sentence to say out loud.
Here's a novel I wrote.
That one was actually kind of like interesting. I've thought about working on that one.
So how do you make, you know, how do you make time and space for yourself each day? Because like, that's a pretty grueling word count. And do you, do you think about it kind of like all in one session? Do you break it up throughout the day? Do you do it morning, evening, Tim, how about you? How do you do it? How do you think it'll.
As a teacher? And I just, I hate this. I really wish I could wake up early and do it. Like that's what would be ideal. Like if I had a normal human life, I would wake up early and I would write for 45 minutes in the morning and just plow through some stuff. But for me to do that now, I would need to be out of bed at like 5am, which is not out of the question. But I leave the house to go to work at 6:45. And that includes making lunches for the kids, laying out clothes, you know, taking care of the animals. Like all the things I have to do in the morning, making coffee.
So getting up, getting up early for you would be like getting up before you go to bed.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, basically. I mean I. Oh, I didn't mention another sort of in the tools category. I am fully planning on writing it on my phone as well because I'm gonna have to fit it in to weird places. But as far as like a fixed time to write, it's gonna be different every day because of how my schedule works. But it's basically like Mondays and Fridays are the days that I can stay after school a little bit. And so I'm gonna like mute my phone for 45 minutes and plow through as much as I can plow through my planning period. I'm usually pretty busy. I got a lot of school stuff to do. But if I have any spare time, I'll use it for that. And then the, the big sacrifice for me will be, you know, in the evenings when I might typically be watching something with Jane. And I've wonder ahead of time like, or, you know, might be doing a puzzle or something. I don't know, just stuff that we would do in the evenings. I will, I will use it then. So I, I do not. It is 100 is just totally impossible for me to set a standard writing time. Um, the six year old and a three year old and teaching and dishes and a puppy. I just it's gonna be. It's gonna be a little bit more random. But unlike previous years I've tried, I'm ready for it this year to. To make it work.
Yeah. Johnny, how about you?
So in the past, when I'm writing with paper, like, I leave at home unless I'm, you know, specifically going out to write. So if I have some time in the middle of the day, I'm just like, ah, crap. I could, but I can't because it's at home. But if I'm doing it digitally this year, I imagine it'll look different because, like, Tim mentions you have your phone with you, which you can always crack out a hundred words or so, which helps. But generally, for NaNoWriMo, I just don't do anything else for the month if my kids aren't around. Like, I'm writing, but if I can get my typing speed up, I might actually have time to occasionally read or sit still when I'm not writing for the month. But they talk about in the books, like, just throw your life away for a month because you're not gonna have time to do anything else. Like, tell your friends, I don't hate you. I'm just really busy this month. So I guess my. The short answer is, like, if I'm not doing something else, I'm writing. So it's. It's tough. Sometimes I just have to not sleep or like, hey, Frankie, you're home from work. I'll see you, like, in three hours.
Bye.
Bye.
Nice. So what does the end goal look like if you win? If you make it through 50,000 words by the end of the month, what do you do? How do you celebrate? Do you win a prize from NaNoWriMo?
It looks like a bottle of bourbon
is what it looks like.
Well, you know, Thanksgiving's at the very end of the month, so you have a nice dinner with your family is what you do.
Absolutely. Is a good. That's a good way to end.
And it works out because when it's early in the month, it really, really screws with everything.
Oh, I bet. Yeah.
But falling on the 28th, I'm like, awesome. That's great.
Yeah.
Yeah. I. So if you are. This is worth mentioning for people who haven't done NaNoWriMo before, but I mentioned Scrivener earlier, and if you win as the. You know, in quotes, win NaNoWriMo and you write those 50,000 words, you can buy Scrivener, which is the sort of Cadillac of writing software.
Yeah.
For 40 off.
Oh, wow. That's a really cool partnership.
Yeah. You get a great, like a huge discount and it's totally worth it. I love Wavemaker, but I will totally admit that Scrivener is superior. But Scrivener is not cheap. I mean, it's not out of control expensive, but it is. I mean, so I. I want to say that full price on scrivener is around 50 bucks. Bucks. Maybe, something like that, but. And now they've got iOS apps as well. But. So that's something that comes at the end if you win. And then I think for me, at the end, if I. If I met my 50,000 word goal, then I think my life would change. That's not true. No, I'm just. I just wanted to say something completely, like, out of, you know, unrealistically true. No, it wouldn't totally change, but it would be like I'm. I'm really looking forward to it because if I get to the end, it'll. I feel, I do feel in some ways like it'll break me out of the cycle of feeling unproductive. You know, I talked about that on the episode about journaling that I always feel like I'm. I'm journaling about how I want to be writing more.
Yeah.
And I feel like NaNoWriMo provides a really fun, good opportunity to break out of a cycle of being unproductive. That's cool, because this is something that I've gotten to the point in my life where I'm like, wow, I've been out of college for 10 years or whatever. I've been out of college for a long time and I wanted to write for so long and I haven't accomplished anything. But hey, 10 years have gone by and I still want it. So I feel like this needs to happen, you know?
Yeah. And so it's. It's definitely like, you know, you have Thanksgiving kind of toward the end when you almost hit your goal. What do you do in December when you. When you're finished with NaNoWriMo? How do you decompress? Do you. Do you write it all? Or do you, like, look at your manuscript again or just take a break? Johnny, how about you?
So the last few years, I've written by hand. So I spend December, like, with a claw, and I can barely hold my phone. Like, really, like, especially two years ago when I did them all in dime novel books from field notes, and they were unlined and, you know, they're precious and I was writing really small and, like, just my hands were killing me. So I spent December taking a Lot of Advil and a lot of. It's like, your reward for NaNoWriMo is to get your life back on December 1st. Like, I remember last year I bought myself the. The Bullet Journal method box set that came with the cool journal.
Oh, that's right.
As a reward. But I really just spent December just, like, reading a giant pile of books because I had absolutely no time to read during NaNoWriMo. So this year, I'm hoping that the digital approach will leave me a little more leeway to, like, not be like, oh, I haven't read a book in an entire month. Like, I'm just like everybody else.
Your carpals, thank you for service, for your compromise.
But, yeah, I mean, a lot of it's just like, you know, for me, it's like, December is getting your life back. And, like, okay, I'm gonna call my friends, make sure they don't hate me now. It's like, you know, you don't tell everybody, like, where you been for a month? I've been busy. I was sick. And I usually, like, at the end of NaNoWriMo, I always get sick.
Yeah.
So there's that, too.
Ringing endorsement there.
Yeah.
Yeah. My. My answer that I would have said anyways is actually exactly like Johnny's. I, Number one thing is I will read a lot to kind of. Because that's what fills the hopper for me with writing. I'll just read more because I'll definitely still be listening to audiobooks in the car and stuff, but in the evenings, I won't have time to sit and read a book like I do now sometimes. So. But I think as far as writing what I sort of feel like will happen, because NaNoWriMo, the model is not sustainable for, you know, year round, obviously it is meant to be a sort of crazy, arbitrary, insane goal that you go after for a month when December hits. What I suspect and what I. Oh, I shouldn't say what I suspect, what I hope is that I keep writing every day and I'll probably go back to. To writing by hand and just taking my time, because if I can, I read. There's a really good podcast I started listening to, which is defunct now, or it's. It's over now, but it was called. It's called like the 10 Minute Writers Workshop or something like that, which sounds kind of hokey, but it's. I mean, it's like Richard Russo and Tana French and Jonathan Letham and all these huge names have done it. It's really good. It's all. These are just like, exactly what it sounds like, but they actually do it. Well, it's a writer just for 10 minutes trying to distill some of the ideas of what they. They came up with within. Richard Russo said something along the lines of, you know, my goal is to write two pages a day, and if I can write two pages a day, five days a week, then that's ten pages a day. And then if I do that for an entire year, then I've almost got a novel, you know. Yeah, I feel like that's a really, like, responsible and sane way to live for the other 11 months of the year. And that's what I hope. Hope comes out of nanowrimo. I really hope.
Hope comes out of nanowrimo. That's really good. So what do you, I guess, last question I have for you. Well, second to last, do you. Do you hope to have something at the end of this that you can turn into something that you publish, or is this purely. It just sort of an exercise in discipline? You know, Johnny, you've said before that, you know, you. You just said on this, this episode that, you know, you have novels that you've written that you don't even know where they are. How do you, like, is your. Is your hope to have something that you can publish or share widely, or is that. Is that secondary? What do you think, Jonny?
So I think every year I started, like, thinking, like, oh, I would love to, like, get back into this. Like, I really like these characters. But then by the end of the month, I'm like, I never want to see this again. And I don't write a word for, like, December and January. But, like, last year, my project probably would have been a better short story. And by the end, I was really just kind of pulling it out of my butt. But, I mean, it would be nice just to even, not necessarily for publication, but just write something that I like enough that I want to, you know, pick it back up and take another look at it and work on it a little more. Because, like, I've drafted a couple novels, but I've never edited one from editing a dissertation like that is not fun. And if I don't like the story, I'm not even going to bother.
Yeah, yeah. What about you, Tim?
I've heard over and over I'm a very stereotypical writer type who spends more time reading and listening about writing than actually writing. You know, And I've gotten to sort of a breaking point in my mind. But when you read about writing and you read these books about writing, one thing that is a totally constant theme, is that writers will say, when my first novel came out, I was so thrilled because I had written four before this that are sitting in a drawer and I insist will never be seen by another human being on this planet. You know, so, like, I finally. I feel like I finally come to terms with that idea. And not just come to terms, but, like, I'm actually excited by this idea. It's like, I feel like I'm getting ready to sort of plow through something that is an important apprenticeship of a writer. Like, I'm gonna. I'm gonna plow through this because I've never. I've done NaNoWriMo before, but I've never made it past the 20,000 word point. That. That's my. My peak, I think, was in, like, the 18, 000 range or something that I got to. And I just kind of. And I think the reason I ended up stopping was I just kind of psyched myself out. But this year, whether it's maturity or dedication, whatever you want to call, like, I just feel like I'm gonna be a little better off this year, and. And no matter what happens, I will definitely tell you guys that I did it.
Yeah.
So. Yeah.
So your answer is just lie.
That's yes. Yeah. So what's going to happen in December? Lies. Well, I. Yeah, so I. I don't know. I'm looking at that. They always. Maybe it's the sort of writer gene in me, but I. Maybe a little grandiose, I don't know. But I just. I just feel like I'm ready to get this out of my system, get this first idea out of my system so I can get to the next good idea. I would be thrilled if it turned into something, but I don't really care. In a good way.
That's awesome. Well, just to wrap it up, you know, we're bound to have some listeners who are themselves, maybe inspired by you, maybe otherwise, have decided to start trying NaNoWriMo for the first time. Johnny, do you have any. Any tips for listeners who are embarking on. On NaNoWriMo?
So, my biggest tip is don't ever get more than 1667 words behind, because both years that I quit that happened, I got, like, two days behind. And that's a lot to come back from when you're, like, on November 20th.
I'm sure it adds up, too. Yeah.
And, like, you know, think ahead for Thanksgiving, obviously, if you're living in this country and, you know, maybe any important dates, like, get yourself a bank, like, if you go through the month with a good, you know, five hundred to a thousand words surplus. And, like, you know, there's that one day that you wrote 1200 and you just really feel like crap. You're like, you know what? I'm going to bed. But now you didn't just screw yourself over. So my biggest tip is, like, really, really pay attention to the word count. Because the only thing that matters at the end is the number, not, you know, the conclusion or how good it is, just whether or not you got 50,000 words. So get the damn words every day. That's it. That's it. And, like, the other thing, they say this in the website and the books. Like, you know, cut yourself some slack for a month. Like, if you're gonna get takeout more or drink a lot more coffee or whiskey than you usually do, just do it. Or, you know, if you want to sit around and watch some, like, garbage TV to decompress that you wouldn't normally watch, like, you know, it's only a month. You can be naughty and rot your brain for a month because you're doing something else that's really good for you.
Yeah. Yeah. Tim, how about you? Do you have any advice? I.
My first piece of advice is to not take any piece of advice that I give you seriously at all. My advice means nothing. There's my. There's my first piece of advice. Don't listen to Tim Wasem.
So if your advice is not to listen to your advice, does that mean we should listen to your advice?
Yes. So here's my advice. My advice is. And I say this to my students, and it works on smaller assignments, and it's worked for me in smaller assignments, but the phrase that goes through my head all the time is right with abandon. And it's this kind of. And I sort of love this, but it kind of goes against Johnny's advice in a way, is that for me, the numbers spook me. Like, I don't want to think about the numbers, but what I want to think about is more time. Like, if I think an hour a day, if I'm writing for an hour a day and I'm writing with abandon, I'm just kind of, like, going for it. Like, not editing myself constantly and just going, going, going, going, going. And especially if I'm typing, there is no way it's going to be under 1600 words or whatever, you know? So your. I've heard so many writers who are successes say that their inner editor tells a. That they're worthless all the time. You know, and if theirs is telling them that, then yours is going to tell you that. So just tell that part of your brain to, like, get a margarita and just hang out in the back or whatever. Because it's just resistance. It's just, you know, it's just the part of your brain that is just trying to keep you safe, but also trying to, or maybe, like, incidentally, cause you to be just, like, a little less happy than you would be if you were doing this. Because Anyone who starts NaNoWriMo likes to write, you know.
Yep.
So I would say advice that I'm giving you. Slash, what that really means is giving myself is right with abandon and just have fun. Just enjoy yourself and do something that, you know, I steal this phrase from Wendell Berry, who we talked about, talk about so much, but just kind of right with abandon and follow your nose through this project.
Well, on that note, that's pretty amazing, I guess. Before we wrap up, do you have anything you want to mention that we didn't talk about here?
Yeah, the community. Like, there are a lot of forums on NaNoWriMo. And, you know, there are a lot of people just on Instagram that they use hashtag, like, NoNoWriMo 2020.
Yeah.
And it's like that. And telling people in the real life that you're doing it is like an extra push to. Not because you're already making a fool of yourself, like, hey, I'm gonna write a novel this month. And then, you know, at least at the end, they won't be able to say, yeah, and you quit.
Yeah.
But, yeah, like, I'm, you know, introverted enough that I don't often appreciate the benefits of associating with other people more than I have to. But NaNoWriMo is a month that I find it very useful.
Yeah.
Especially strangers, because, you know, you're going to tell a stranger your word count. You might not tell your spouse. Like, I only wrote 800 words today.
Yeah.
Nice. Yeah. All right, guys.
I, I, I have a couple students who are seniors now, former students who are seniors now. And they came to me the other day and they're, they're in our marching band, which, our marching band at our school is kind of legendary in Tennessee. And they came to me and they said, state is going to be over next week, and we really just like to get a break from getting ready for State. We really want to write, so can we start a writing group? And I was like, yes. Have you heard of nanorimo? And they're like, no. And I said, it's National Novel Writing Month, and they said we're in. So I kind of agree with Johnny. Like, having compatriots who you're doing it with is really important. And my students will be my compatriots and we'll be writing on Mondays and Fridays in my classroom. And I'm really, really looking forward to that. It's, it's something you need. And you know, there's lots of resources online to make use of. There are. There's a book, actually, I think it's from Chris Beatty. It's called no Plot, no Problem, which
is a good book.
Sort of the official NaNoWriMo book, which I, I've read portions of and I really enjoyed. There's also. If you follow NoNoWriMo on Twitter throughout the month, any day that you're sort of stuck, go on there and find their nano, their, their word sprints that they do where they will kind of give you a prompt and say, oh, are you stuck? Well, here's what happens next in your novel in sort of general sense. And then you just sort of follow it and go for it and see how much you can. You can write in 30 minutes. And I know for a lot of people that's, that's super helpful. So my. Yeah. As far as resources, use them all. Yeah, that's what I'm going to do.
Awesome. Well, guys, thank you.
This.
Thanks for opening up. And I, I mean, I'll. I'll be talking to you throughout the month, but so, so much, so much love and good wishes and good vibes to what you're going to be doing. So yay.
Thank you.
Report back in two weeks and let us know. You'll hit 25,000 word mark. It'll be great. Right?
Well, scratchy voice is like, dude,
we'll get a Facebook post or Instagram post of Johnny I's writer face.
Yeah, I can't wait to see that. How old are you? Yeah. Cool. Well, Johnny, where can people find you on the Internet to find out your progress and to see your stuff?
I'm on the Internet@pencilrevolution.com and on Twitter and Instagram Ensolution.
Nice. Tim, how about you?
You can find me on Twitter imwasum W A S E M and on Instagram timothywassum.
Nice. And I am at Twitter and Instagram as awealthly. And you can find my website at Andy, wtf. So this is the Erasable podcast and that's what you've been listening to for the last hour and a half. And you can find new episodes and a lot of stuff at our website, which is Erasable Us. You can find show notes for this episode, links to everything we've talked about at erasable US127. That's the number of this episode. And you can lend your support and make sure we keep on producing good content@patreon.com erasable and a huge, huge thank you to Chris Jones for, for your for your support. Come join our Facebook group and join the community. It is free. It is on facebook.com groups erasable and you can find us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as erasablepodcast. Thank you very much and we will talk to you next time in two weeks. Do you like our podcast? Most people like our podcast, but if you like our podcast, David will turn it off.