NaNoMicrophoNo

I'm all hopped up on Earl Grey tea, so let's put some words down.

I'm slightly behind schedule with the old NaNoWriming, but there will probably be time for that later. That's the clarion call of the failed writer, but I have confidence in myself to get back on the writing horse and... I don't know... do a whole chapter about stirrups or something.

Have I used "clarion call" correctly? Let's see.

Ah, a clarion is a kind of bugle or trumpet. That makes sense. It's probably connected to "clarinet", and also to Clarissa Explains It All.

It probably is.

Good old Earl Grey. It has never made me not make sense once.

I had a stand-up gig last night. It was another good one.

There's a review of the night here. I'm pleased with what they said about me, but I am slightly annoyed that they misquoted me. I would never use the word "hipster" as an adjective.

It was all new stuff, though a big chunk came from a previous blog post. You see? You guys get the inside track. You will always know about these things first. It's like being inside the head of a great artist. Or within a five mile radius of Quentin Tarantino.

There was quite a bit of improvised stuff in my set, including having to deal with a broken tripod (which I referred to as a "monopod" to little reaction).

The main thing that stuck with me was my interaction with a girl in the front row. "Girl" might be a bit patronising, but she was so young and innocent looking that it made my eventual abuse of her all the worse. Her phone went off early on, and I did some not-particularly-hilarious bit of mock outrage that I was worried she took seriously. I don't like to pick on people in the audience, because I hate being picked on myself.

She was in the front row. Nobody wants to be in the front row. For all I know, she was reluctant to sit there on the grounds that she might get singled out. "Don't worry! No-one will talk to you!" her friend might have said. Her friend should be ashamed for being so hypothetically wrong.

A while after the phone thing, she reacted to something I said in an interesting way. I talked to her again, concluding that, coupled with the phone call, she must be an "attention-whore".

It was meant in a gentle way, but there's something about the word "whore". People don't tend to like it. She and her friends reacted in a really outraged, sitcom way. I felt terrible immediately.

I tried to dig myself out of it with an improvised bit that I found quite funny, even if the audience didn't. I'm paranoid about being thought of as a misogynist, so was insistent that there was a hyphen in 'attention-whore', rendering it politically correct. "That hyphen makes me not a sexist," I said. I was pleased with that, because it was strange logic expressed in a strange syntax.

If it was anyone else, it would have been fine. But she looked so sweet and nervous that I felt like I'd punched Bambi in the face.

I'm sure this is all incredibly patronising, and that she was absolutely fine about it. But I like to chastise myself about meaningless things. By doing it, I make myself seem sensitive and considerate, without having to take any action to remedy my behaviour.

I also sang a made-up segue song that didn't really work.

All in all, a nice evening with a nice crowd. I didn't even have any awkward conversations with strangers.

I should really get back on the novel horse. My story has reached an exciting stage, where an anthropomorphised cliff is having to explain to his father why he won't join the army. I think the next chapter will be about that not happening.