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It’s Michaelmas Term at Saint Clare: #AdAstraWriMo begins at midnight.
Once again, the gates of Saint Clare School for Girls creak open.
The crest still gleams with its public motto: Ad Astra, To the Stars, but those who know the place remember the stitched-in version, the one learned by heart and not by rote:
Per Disciplinam et Lacrimas, Ad Astra – Through discipline and tears, to the stars.
Tomorrow, November, the eleventh month begins and, with it, writers globally again attempt the 50 000-word challenge. This year, I’m returning to Saint Clare not to start something new, but to bring everything home: the stories, the notes, the fragments that have accumulated since the first tale was written back in 1999.
At last, my new Scrivener project now holds the entire school – the dormitories, the prefects’ room, the staff meetings that go on far too long, and, most importantly, the archives. Throughout the month of November I’ll be migrating, revising, and writing new pages for Inez of the Upper IV (Summer Term 1955) – and, in another wing of the imagination, finishing the Honour and Ned series, their stories set some twenty years earlier.
It’s not exactly NaNoWriMo, and not quite rebellion either.
Think of it as a special Michaelmas term: attendance required, results to be determined.
Saint Clare November: 11,483 / 50 000 words
Fifty thousand words will (hopefully) follow – some new, some rediscovered, all part of the same ledger.
The Old Girls return and the inkpots are full once more.
The term begins tomorrow. I’ll be in my study, writing, counting words, and organizing, and in the school’s library, procrastinating via exhaustive research.
If you want to follow along: everything will be filed under#AdAstraWriMo.
:::reflexively claps hands enthusiastically in a decidedly un-Boomer-like fashion:::
:::gathers dignity while looking around to see who noticed:::
:::harumphs in 65-year-old white guy:::
Well proposed, young lady. ¡Bien hecho!
I am sure we are are all looking forward to the results of this estimable project. Now off you go to your desk.
Apologies for the late reply! Thank you — such applause from a distinguished gentleman of your refined vintage may quite go to a girl’s head. Still, I shall promise to keep my feet on the ground… mostly.
Still, every Saint Clare girl knows exactly what it looks like when a gentleman is forced to “gather his dignity” after being adorable.
I’ll take your ¡bien hecho! and your perfectly delivered “off you go to your desk” as my cue. Consider me dutifully trotting off, my skirt swishing a tiny bit more than strictly necessary,ribbons straight and halo nearly so.
You updated your word count! Congratulations on the start of your November journey!
I did it twice with the old website that shall not be named, and I know from the experience how hard it is. I’ve never reached 50K , I’m not that prolific, but I wrote every day without a fail and could pat myself on the back at the end.
Please keep that in mind, you probably know that already, it’s your goals and your achievements, and only you can measure them.
Now, as JAB said, off you go!! We will cheer for you from the sidelines.
PS Sneaky me included link to my first book Birching Bordello instead of my usual blog. I hope you don’t mind.
Thank you! Seriously, well done you for doing it twice. This daily writing is no small thing, whatever the final word count. In my case I’m convinced the Scrivener goblins should award medals for simply showing up each day.
And yes, definitely, I’m keeping your advice firmly in mind. I haven’t posted much new writing yet. Invisible labors but lots of it. I’ve been up to my… um, elbows in moving the project onto Scrivener: importing files, reorganizing folders, untangling old drafts, and, happily, discovering documents I apparently wrote this past summer in a fugue state… It’s a surprisingly big job, but it’s moving.
Most of all, thank you for the cheering, it genuinely helps. Also, not only don’t mind the link, I think it’s a wonderful Michaelmas offering.