NaNoWriMo: The Process of Not Writing a Book

With NaNoWriMo upon us, you may be worrying about the levels of your procrastination. With that in mind, Jake Mann gives us his experience of the writing process, or not…

So I’m writing a book. I have been for a while. I’m even lucky enough to have a publishing deal, so it’s all properly adult and real and everything, no messing about. I’m also just about adult enough to realise that I’m in an enviable position, loads of people out there would love the chance to publish a book. So why, dear reader, am I floating about like a fart in a wind tunnel and taking so long to write it. Five years and counting up to now. That just seems lazy and half-hearted right? After all, writing is just putting one word after another. Easy eh? Well let me open the curtain a little and you can look in on my day as a writer. Don’t worry, I got dressed this morning, there’s only so much I would inflict on you.

Waking up is ok, I can do, that, I do it most days, I’ve mastered it. Coffee is next. Coffee is essential. I mean really, really essential. If I’m lucky I’ll have one made for me by a woman that appears to have hung around for quite a while now. I occasionally talk to her and she seems quite nice. Apart from when she catches me drying myself on the curtains, she ’s quite fussy about that for some reason.

So now I have coffee at my elbow, I can dive headlong into the gruelling day of creating magical images and places using the majesty of words… but I’ll just check my social media first, you never know there could be something important happening. I wouldn’t want to miss it. Just as well I did, look, there’s a cat knocking something off a shelf. And a much easier way to cut potatoes. This is priceless stuff. Oh and look, more treasure, some quotes taken completely out of context, and being used to promote dog apartheid, or stop racism amongst wooden spoons, or “join our campaign to stop garden furniture being needlessly left out in the rain.” I’d be a fool to miss all this.

A video has caught my eye and now I’m on Youtube. You know how dangerous this is. It’s a steep downward spiral, from watching a video on the horrific de-forestation of the Amazon. Time and reason seem to blur into a fog and before long you’re watching how to make your scatter cushions look like squid. I’m sure I spent a week trapped there once, and at the end of it I was still useless at yoga. I had to call someone who was good with knots to assist me in standing.

Ah well, it’s lunch time now. Cheese on toast, burnt, fire alarm shouting at me, kitchen filled with smoke and that woman making shouty noises too. “How can you not make cheese on toast?” she says whilst struggling to get the top off a jar of pickled onions and not daring to ask for help.

So now lunch is done and dusted I had better have another coffee. While I’m drinking it I’ll just message x,y and z, you know, just to hear how they got on with a,b and c, and what they said about the cake/dress/food/garden/disease/adultery. I mean, you can’t neglect your social life. It would be rude. After hearing how x had a fun time with c but ended up in hospital with a donkey related injury and how his mother destroyed the photos, it’s really time to knuckle down.

Time for another coffee. We’ve run out. Which of course it means it immediately starts to pour with rain as I step outside to walk to the shop. Once back home it’s time to dry out and warm up. You can’t write in that state.

Right. This is it. I’m going to write something. I can feel it ready to pour itself out onto the page. “Dinner time” comes the shout.

Dinner is done, I’ve spoken to the adult and child that hang around the house and washed the dishes. Better sit down for a while to let my dinner go down. I don’t want to get cramp by writing just after a meal.

Right, I’m ready again. Poised at the computer like a ninja panther about to release my literary weapons. The phone rings. My mother spends two hours telling me about an aunt I’ve never met, you know the one with the milky eye. She’s had a sponge cake accident and they’re not sure if they can save the frosting. It’s just a matter of time apparently.

It’s dark outside now. It’s getting late. The body is weakening but the brain is overdosing on caffeine. I must write something.

“The childrens faces looked pale, like pancakes floating on a moonlit pond.”

I delete it. I go to bed