NaNoWriMo is going to be a challenge this year, and not for the reasons you might think. For those of you unfamiliar with the acronym, November has been deemed National Novel Writing Month by the internet writer powers that be, and I’m all in. It's free and an opportunity to connect with other writers, and its sole purpose is to motivate writers to write.
The rules are pretty straightforward—reach a 50,000 word count by the end of the month. That's it. And there is no one monitoring your progress except you. I'm already "cheating," because the novel I’m working on is already well past the 50,000 word count in length, but I’m using the event to add to what I have while editing and restructuring at the same time. My current count is close to 70,000 words. By the end of the month, I might be down by 30,000. Who knows? And I will be counting this blog post as words on the page. You betcha! Because writing is writing as far as I’m concerned. And the focus of NaNoWriMo is not competitive in nature.
So why, you may ask, is this year going to be challenging for me? It's a weird little story. Embarrassing even. It's because I've been banned. And this is where some of you reading this blog post may decide I’m petty. Probably. But any names from this point forward will be changed to protect the innocent. Or the guilty, depending on your point of view.
I work in a small two room office doing billing for a service oriented company. There are 6 people in the office running the business side of things on most days. It doesn’t have a lunch room or even a bathroom. Terrible, you say! But not really. The business owners are members of a private club that resides next door, and we can use the bathrooms there. The place is also literally empty throughout most of the day Monday through Friday. Our office staff takes the club's deliveries, contacts their club management if we see anything in need of attention and lets outside maintenance and cleaning crews in when no one else is there to do it. This isn’t an occasional thing. It's daily.
This is also where I, being the only hourly employee in our office, go to eat my lunch. I’ve done it for five plus years. I can’t eat at my desk and take advantage of the moment to get in some lunch time writing. Can’t do it with other office staff around. They’re like most non writers. If they see you contemplating your iPad, they see no reason why they can't flag you down to chat. This isn’t a gripe, it's just the way it is and, recognizing this, I slip away to someplace quiet—the usually vacant club next door—where I can eat and write in relative peace.
Except that I've recently been banned. That's right. Banned. Why? Because I’m not a club member. And the incoming president of the club happened to show up one day and find me eating my lunch all alone in what is apparently his club. Because he's incoming president. And there are bylaws. I know, I know. Clubs have rules, and who am I to be Karening on because I don’t agree with rules?
Let's break down the day that I got banned. I was sitting alone eating my late lunch, when a maintenance man showed up to flush the beer lines behind the bar. No one was available at the club to help them. The place is locked without a key, but I was there, and I didn’t let him in because he never rang the doorbell. He did go to our office though, and someone from our office let him in twice. But since we couldn’t help the guy, and a call to the club's office manager ended up finding out that the bar manager needed to be there to supervise, he left. Not two minutes after he was gone, the incoming club president (I didn’t know this at the time) saunters in and gives me a look. I said, "Hey there! We didn’t know anyone was here. There was a guy who showed up to flush your beer lines, and he just left. You can still catch him if you need him."
The incoming president knew nothing about it and didn’t seem to care. Instead, he homed in on me. "Are you a member?"
Having eaten there on and off for five years with the knowledge of several club staff, I answered honestly. "I work next door. I'm just on my lunch break."
That's when he broke the news, and rather bluntly. I could no longer eat there. Only club members could be there. And when I tried to explain in shock that it hasn't been a problem for over five years, that my bosses were members of the club and that we did a lot for the club when no one was around to take their deliveries, etc., he looked at me flatly and shrugged. "Those are the rules. That's just what I was told."
When I asked who he was, I found out he was the incoming pres, and when I asked him to talk to the office manager, and to my bosses who were members, he said he would. He never did. But I did, and my employer was incensed when I told them, considering all that we do. Meetings were held, and the acting committee of the club held firm. "You can do all the good things you do for our club when we aren’t there to do it. You can continue to use our bathrooms, but we shouldn’t even allow you that. And thank you for being such pleasant neighbors." I'm paraphrasing. I wasn’t part of the meeting. It was above my pay grade.
So in a nutshell, be quiet, be helpful, get banned. One more point for the decline of humanity. I will be spending my lunches at work sitting in a cramped car trying to write while trying to balance my cup o noodles on my knee and hoping it doesn’t spill. But I will get to claim a NaNoWriMo badge. The one you award yourself with when you're guilty of writing in unlikely or unusual places.
If you're a writer and don’t know about NaNoWriMo, check them out here. And join in!
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