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I’m participating in NaNoWriMo this year. This is an event where tens of thousands of people from all over the world undertake to write a 50,000-word novel in the month of November.

You can follow my progress from my profile page: Red6, or take a look at my daily stats.

Fifty thousand words works out at 1,667 words a day. My plan at this stage is to go for 3,000 words on the three days a week I don’t work, and 1,000 words on work days. This gives me a total of 58,000 words for the month, and thus a bit of a buffer if the schedule slips.

The rules of NaNoWriMo require that you don’t start work on the novel proper until November (and it must be a new project, not the continuation of an existing project), but you are allowed to prepare an outline and figure out details of the plot and characters and so forth ahead of time.

While thinking about various plots a couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine (Adrian, who is now doing NaNoWriMo himself) showed me a sketch he drew many years ago:

He suggested that I should consider using it as an inspiration for my NaNoWriMo novel. And so I shall!

One of my favourite restaurants, Ginkgo, happened by a great stroke of luck to be having a vegetarian banquet night on the day of my 42nd birthday, so a group of us went along. It was a set menu, which was great because it meant we got to try all sorts of curious dishes that we might otherwise have not been brave enough to order. My favourites were the lotus heart salad and the Sechuan tofu.

Sueann, Ginkgo’s delightful proprietor, decorates the restaurants with various items she brings back from China. Just as we were leaving I happened to mention to her that it was my birthday, and so she grabbed one of the items off a shelf and gave it to me as a present! How cool is that?

I spent Labour Weekend with my parents at their property, Mamaku, in Tasman. As always, their house was looking wonderful, and the views glorious:

We spent a day with my sister and her family in their new bach over the hill in Golden Bay. The bach was just perfect, and perfectly sited right on the beach. Just magic:

So that’s just what I’ll do.

In my never-ending quest for good footware fit for a vegetarian, I have recently discovered to my delight that SAFE run a cruelty-free shop in Auckland with a web order form. I ordered some shoes from them, and they arrived today:

The uppers are made of hemp. So why did I order this particular style? Well, because it was either this style or the other one .

The crowd who make the shoes, Blackspot, are serious about their activism. They are not actually a vegetarian outfit, but an anti-Big Business organization. With the shoes came a numbered certificate naming me a shareholder in their anti-corporation. Among other things, the certificate says:

“The anti-logo, hand drawn on the side of your blackspots, is a symbol of resistance against multinational hyper-branders like Nike that, over the past few years, have come to dominate so much of our lives. The red tip, hand painted on the nose of your sneaker, is for kicking mega-corporate ass and transforming the sneaker industry, and indeed capitalism itself, into more diverse, grassroots affairs.”

They foresee the anti-corporation movement eventually (and somewhat paradoxically) becoming a big player:

“Imagine: an independent blackspot music label that cuts into Big Music’s share. Or a chain of blackspot restaurants that takes business away from McDonald’s by serving only locally-produced food.”

Interesting stuff.

And another one. On TV3 News last night the reporter camped outside the Tui Awards claimed that “the red carpet is literally heaving with the stars of the New Zealand music industry.” Must’ve made it hard to walk down…

Radio New Zealand National has just finished playing a twenty-part adaptation of Master of Paxwax, a science fiction novel written by New Zealand (ish) author, Phillip Mann. I had heard of Mann before, but had never read any of his books. The adaptation was very enjoyable, and it was certainly a delight to find science fiction on National Radio, even if it was consigned to a ghetto hour (11:40pm Tuesdays). I’ve never really been interested in having books read to me, but I found I looked forward to each installment with eagerness, in a way I associate with childhood.

Master of Paxwax is the first book in a series of two. An adaptation of the second book is being made (or has been made), but unfortunately we’ll have to wait until next year to hear it.