November

After most of October and half of November I must admit: I dropped the Bali blog-ball (let's call it a 'blob') and it went rolling under the sofa. I haven't looked yet.

I quickly realised that if I kept the magnifying glass on Bali we would all be drowning in geckos and yoga news. We would marvel at butterfly wings and commiserate about the traffic. Then we would all feel a bit jaundiced, a bit off ...and say in unison ENOUGH - followed by a very long list.

Excerpt from the Enough List.
Enough:

- insects
- white men with long hair, unkempt
- motorbikes
- surfers (riding on motorbikes, surfboards attached to their tattooed right thigh)
- rice paddies
- tattoos of ethno/mystic stuff. Dragons and roses. Sanskrit quotations. Che Guevara. The Holy Grail.
- yoga masters and how-(much)-to-become-one
- Bintang beer, big and small
- bamboo poles
- meditation posters
- cheap sarongs
- spas

Let's then congratulate each other for narrowly escaping the above, and then I'll tell you what I've been doing instead.

Biggest things first? I started buying wine. This means three things - the hundreds of thousands required thanks to the currency itself are losing their restraining power on my brain. I know now: it sounds like a lot, equates to much less. Just like some people. (Miaow.)

It also means that I located the places where wine is (slightly) cheaper - part of the Bali-becoming-home plan. And finally, it means I'm desperate enough. Let me pour myself a glass before I tell you all that stuff (as a frog hops gently under my feet and onward, to a chlorine bath in the pool). Frog and I both refreshed, we may proceed.

I'm doing NaNoWriMo. Nano-what? you will exclaim. Deep breath: National Novel Writing Month - which apparently has been going on for aeons (yes I can be ever-so-slightly unobservant on occasion...) has two simple rules:

1. Quantity vs quality - the target is 50,000 words (which is less than a half of a novel...) - these words, because they promise not to read, can be "blah-blah-blah-blah-blah" typed ten thousand times. Easy.
2. New project - don't give us an old school essay. Start your own Game of Thrones.

At the end, a robot counts words and - provided you have written your 1,667 daily portion -  you are Declared a Winner. And then? Nothing. They allow you to slip into oblivion with a virtual badge and your own unbearable novel. By that stage you are so sick of writing your daily blah-s and so exhausted from endless NaNo pep talks and webinars on 'getting your story out' that you can't even write a half-decent letter to Santa.

In conclusion: BONKERS.

Having said that, I am 30,000 words in. I have never been so deep into any project - not even the ones I finished. I am writing a YA adventure story with a quest and some love drama but alas, no British wizards or sexy vampires. It's so easy, I suspect it is carrying me along. It will probably be read by one person (Moona) and will get one good review (his); especially if I also cook that thing he likes on the night he finishes, and buy a bottle of wine...

I have much more to say but I'm waking up at 5 to write my novel; so send me some pep-words and virtual hugs (one can never have enough of those) and, in the expat language of Bali (yep, straight from the Enough List): "Peace, dude".