The Day Before I Go...

I have planned a month long holiday! That's right, for a whole month I will be going somewhere else. Will I be taking the kids and my beloved wife? No. Will I be leaving soon? No, I'm not going anywhere. This isn't a trip to the far east, a safari in Africa or a road trip across North America. Nope. I'm going far further than that.

I'm heading into a book.

I've booked tickets and packed my bags, damn, I've had my jabs and I've even let a few friends know where I'm going. You know, to make sure they know where to look if it it all goes wrong...and even though I'm looking at a trip into unknown territory I still have a map! How fucked up is that?!

Let me say before I go though, this is no normal map. There are no roads marked, no beaches, no mountains, no streams and no rules. I can spend what I like, travel where I want, but still, even if the mountains look divine and the waterfalls breathtaking, if it's not in the plan or against the rules then I'm going to have to keep on driving past and remember to come back again another year. Did I say there were no rules? Yeah there aren't...and yet there are. Trouble is the only person who knows the rules is me, but I haven't told myself what they are yet. I get an envelope each day and that will open with haste and find perhaps what before me is difficult, beautiful, taxing, upsetting...I just wont know. Fucked up eh? Yeah.

For this month I'm going to have to do all the things I normally do and yet I will almost certainly be elsewhere while I'm doing them. I'll nod and engage in conversation and be right in front of whoever it is I should be giving my undivided to and yet somewhere in the back of my head I'll be swinging through a whole different life. Someone else's story that just happens to be sitting in my head.

I hope no-one disowns me or thinks I'm being rude. I hope they simply know where I am and nod and say 'Ok, fine, when you getting back?'

Here's the plan as I see it. Ready? Cool.

I'm heading into the Nanowrimo for the month of November and I'll be hitting it hard. 50,000 words in 31 days. My fool hardy aim is to strike 20,000 of those in the first ten days. I aim to sleep less, write more and be as present as I can be while trying to not disengage from what I'm writing.

I will be on twitter. I aim to be here on the blog with updates and perhaps the cheeky post if I can squeeze it in. Stick with me please and I hope that in less than a month I will have something...something that needs loving and time and cuddles and understanding. Something that I'll be trying to craft into a novel that's better than last years (hey, I liked last years).

Wish me luck? Thank you. I'm going to need it.