I heard about National Novel Writing Month last year, but didn’t enter since I was rather busy. Then I was reminded of this year’s incarnation by monkeyspeak. One thing led to another, and so on Hallowe’en Eve, I signed up. Which means: I need to churn out a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. Mimi will hopefully join me in this insanity, so I have someone to compete against.

Just to be clear - I have absolutely no pretension of writing anything resembling a work of art, nor have I ever really desired to write the Great American (or Canadian) Novel. I’m doing this as a lark, and because this will help pass the time during yet another dark and dreary November. (Sound familiar?) I fully realise that whatever I write will probably be hopeless derivative drivel. But then readers of this blog are familiar with that already.

As proof: so far I have a vague sketch involving a suicidal grocery clerk named Todd Castle, about to throw himself off the Lions Gate Bridge, and the day’s events that led him to this situation. As to where this originated: Todd Castle is the name I placed on a painting of a gravestone in grade 6 or 7, derived from the first name of a fellow classmate (the class bully) and Frank Castle (aka the Punisher). The bridge jumping idea was probably inspired by a gruesome nugget published in The Stranger last week about the parking lot beneath the Aurora Bridge in Seattle, as well as my recollections about some loser arrested for urging a woman to jump from Lions Gate. I haven’t read Polaroids from the Dead (which I understand also features a bridge jumping episode from the same bridge), although I have read (and admire) some of Douglas Coupland’s other works. And being a grocery clerk is about the only thing from my own life that I can mine for something interesting to write about. I have seen Clerks - it is utterly brilliant, quite different from mine and my family’s experiences (customers are deranged enough without having borderline psychotic clerks thrown into the mix); so I hope to avoid any similarities to that movie.

I’m hoping the rest of it will write itself from there.