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2023_11_30.md

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  • {{renderer :wordcount_}}
    • this is the last day of November 2023, the last day of NanoWriMo for the same year and the end of a 30 day sprint to write 50K words.
    • The reason I did this were that I found out about NanoWrimo wathing a video from a channel called "No Boilerplate" on youtube that mentioned it in a video about the "cult of done". In it, the author discussed what he found to be a tendency to want to complete something and for that to be done in a certain way, where as often, things dont work out like you would expect them to. Not all projects or ventures are perfected on the first try, and often things are never really done or indeed ever perfect. The aim of the game so to speak is to get it done, not obsessing over what it looks like.
    • This thinking I guess falls into the category of 'writers block' where by an author is said to be frozen and imobile infront of a blank piece of paper, a typewriter or a computer screen, not knowing what to do, let alone how to start writing. Attempts to start the first page are evident as discarded documents in the wast paper basket, or the electronic equivalent, whilst there is no other evidence of a production of any kind.
    • Writers, as they say, need to write and proffessionals, of which I would not consider myself to be one, write every day, so I am led to believe. So if you are going to produce 'copy' as it is called, then you need to write, and write often. So I needed to try out this writing thing, and see if I could do it, before committing to any further writing based ventures. Our comapany itself needs 'copy'. We spoke with a marketting company to help us stategise our marketting efforts, and they said that we needed to produce 'copy' for our website. Seems pretty obvious right ? But when you are in the thick of it starting a business, you dont always see that obviouse thing. I knew I needed to create web site materials but had not tackled in my mind the real implications of that. I knew I had to write, I just didnt think of it being like being a writer in the traditional sense, like you would be if you were Jilly Cooper or Stephen King.
    • I dont think I want to be Jilly Cooper and some of Stephen Kings books still give me the screeming heeby jeebies thinking about them, so I am not sure I want to be like him either. The mechanisms of writing are in inevitablity there for if you are going to run a business and for that to be in any way communicated to the outside world. In other words, copy I believe, has to be the starting point of a marketing strategy. From here on in, whatever you do with that copy, as I see it, like a raw material even, is pretty much up to you. You can use this to distill out to articles, blogs, posts, tweets, videos, podcasts and whatever else floats your boat. Fill your boots. But if you dont have the source material, then you are going to be stuck. - I trained as an artist, not as a programmer. Computers were not something we all had back in the 70s or even 80s to mean anythying untill Sinclair Spectrum and Commodore 64 came along. I was a bit of a geek, but not a computer geek. I was more into the arts and crafts, and I was good at drawing and painting. I was good at maths, despite my teachers telling me it was a fluke to get the grades I did. I think that was born out of prejudice as I was at a mixed school of grammar and non grammar students that had just been amalgomed into the comprehensive system and I fell into the latter group, so was seen as less well educated. That might sound shocking or unbelievable to you reading this now but it was a real thing back then.
    • All of the great artists prepared for any work that they did by doing many, many sketches, rough works, notes, sourcing of things that would represent a feeling or even a thought. These are sometimes called source material and can themselves become sought after works of art. I have a book of Leonardo Da Vincis sketches, as no doubt many do, as they themselves are a marvel. I dont read Italian, let alone the code in which Leanardo wrote his copious notes but his sketches and drawings speak to me through these pages. I feel comfortable and in good company with a mind of clear genius and a talent that is beyond anything I could ever dream of being. Perhaps I am wrong in liking him and he was a complete ******. But I'd like to think not, having studied his sketches, even trying to copy some myself.
    • Writing a novel, I learnt from the Nanowrimo website, as I had sort of known but not really thought about, has to have a 'first draft' and that first draft is not going to be the finished article. It is going to be a rough work, a sketch, a source material. It is going to be a work in progress. It is going to be a work in progress that is going to be re-written and worked upon. So I had to get a first draft of something worthy of publishing as a book if I was to call myself a writer.
    • The Great Gatsby' F. Scott Fitzgerald is I believe a 50 thousand word novel and it is this as a measure of what a book is, that Nanowrimo use to be the yard stick by which to measure something that is a book
    • To write a book then, requires us to split this into several sessions as I doubt even the great F. Scott would have been able to pen his great work in a day. Maybe he could. But I certainly couldnt and I have other things I need to do, like coding, web sties, apps and pipelines to mention but a few. So splitting this task over 1 month results in a requirement of 1667 words a day over 30 days.
    • I aimed to do more than this per day as that would give me a margin for error and if I am to write regularly and so as to not really need to think of it as a chore, I needed to do around 1.6 to 2K per day if I am to have a chance of keeping this thing up.
    • There must be a starting point, a brief or a plan of what I am going to write.
    • Since 2007 and a bit before that in actual fact, I had a bookmarking tool called pinboard.in, bookmarking for introverts I think it was called and I started using this and have done so ever since. Within this I have date time stamped both bookmarks from web browsing and searches and notes for thousands of entries 4982 to be precise and just after I extracted this to a relational databsse and then to spreadsheets.
    • so this served in part to my source materials, for want of a better word. I wonder what Leanardo would thing to such if he were with us now. I like to think he would have used the web and everything else, AI included in his work. The results of which would be astrounding and possibly terrifying.
    • Starting to write on November 1st, day one like in the reality tv show in the house, I started with the first subject by tag I had which was PXE. This stands for Preboot Execution Environment. That wont sound like fun I am sure but to me it is golden as I remmember all of the things that this connects with and what lead up to it. I remember why I was so interesting in this bakc in 2004,5,6 and indeed its predecessor and associated technologies going bakc into the late 90s using bootp, rarp, yellow pages. The memories of what I was doing, where it was and with and around whom started to re-emerge.
    • this process was then repeated on subsequent days and similar recollections started to come back but each time also, current tech and thinking also came to the fore and I was able to start to compare and contrast, also to plot a course of events that joined them up. Patterns emerge of what a thing was, why it is important and how it has evolved. Its surprising sometimes to realise how little concous design and thought process goes into some things and how many concepts we have are a product of necessity and circumstance that have evolved in order to solve a problem or to meet a need.
    • My process seems to have worked as I have a first draft of over 80K words as of 29th of Novemnber and I hit the 50K mark on I think it was the 14th or 15th, so pretty much half way. Some days I pushed to get as close to 6K but didnt quite make it but wanted to front load my writing so I could get ahead. This is the way I do a lot of things and I guess is how you can 'over achieve' in goal setting.
    • All of this is, if you are reading this from a github reposistory you will see is published under a creative commons license that permits the redistribution but atrribution of work, so as it to be able to be copyright for myself as the author, which I thought was fair and makes the information in at least the raw form available to others that it may be of use to.
    • So today I can say that I am a writer, as I have at least for a month, been one and even as part of my day job. Ive still written code, built apps, published websties, met with customers, business as usual but for things in November slowing down as they tend to do so in the build up the the silly season as is the custom in the UK and elesewhere in western world.
    • Former colleagues and friends of the same have kindly provided materials that they have kept over the years that recollect these times and when we worked together and I have used some of these also, taking my memories back much further than 2007 when my bookmars began and I have not really scratched the surface of this 'source material' as yet.
    • I can with reasonable confidence then assume that I have succeeded in the NanoWrimo goal of 50K in 30 days, have a book on my hands, if only in 1st draft and can write at a pace of 2.7K a day without blowing my own trumpet, these are the stats and I have to acknowledge that I have done this and that this is a thing right now.
    • So to the reader, if you are with me at this point, thankyou for reading and for myself, I the writer can call myself an author and writer. Game on.