NANO NANO NANO NANO NANO…. BATMAN! (I’M PRETTY SURE I MADE THAT JOKE LAST YEAR)

So Nanowrimo is upon us once again, (This is me: feel free to buddy up) and once again I’m using the month to concentrate on words and give myself permission to prioritise my writing over the distractions in my life.

Yeah, I know I’m a pro and writing is an important aspect of both my personality and my artistic career. But I’m also a man with a metric fucktonne of duties and responsibilities and sometimes I need the crutch to lean on. I’m happy for you if you don’t understand this, and good luck to ye’s. Me, I lie the feeling of having permission, so here I am.

This year’s project is Bear Hunt, and it’s starting out as a load of fun because, for the first time in a long time, it’s not remotely speculative. It’s a straight crime novel, and here’s the brief I’ve set myself:

Somebody dragged Bear back into the life. Somebody made him a criminal again. And now somebody’s spying on him. Doesn’t matter if it’s the cops or the crims. Somebody’s going to pay.

Sound fun? It’d better, because I’m probably going to bore you shitless with updates as the month progresses. So just to give you a little taster– and in the full spirit of understanding that this is a first draft, and for me, a loose one with no internal editor present– here’s a few lines to get us all started:

None of what went down would have happened if Bear hadn’t got himself banged up on a DUI charge. Bang to rights, too: point two over the limit, and the blood test confirmed it. So they took his car and stood him up in front of the magistrate in his only suit, and no amount of pleading that he needed his licence to ferry Mum back and forth to hospital and her therapist appointments were enough to save him, not with his record. Disqualified from driving, and his application for an extraordinary licence binned before it even started because extraordinaries are for work purposes only, Mister Burrage, as you well now. Then they spat him out, to stand blinking on the steps of the Mandurah courthouse, wondering how the hell he was going to explain it to Mum and trying to loosen his tie with thick, shaking fingers. Which was a bad time for a weaselly little prick like Gavin Sullivan to slide up from the shade of the nearby car park, but then, no time was ever a good time to have a weaselly little prick like him smiling his slimy smile at you.

Progress charts after day one are about as much use as publishing league tables after the first round of matches, but with a daily quota of 1667 words to make Nano’s target of 50 000 in the month, I’m mildly pleased to report that I’ve completed 2362. So here’s a progress pie chart.

Mmmmm, pie.