And you thought Vader was irritable BEFORE……..
Alex is our resident Webcomic creator. He grew up in Puerto Rico, but didn’t reach true Nerdom until he came state side when he was in middle school. He’s been drawing since he was five, but has only started posting Webcomics in the past year. You can check out his amazing and original work at tapastic.com/gomezalexj.
National Novel Writing Month writing badges are a relatively new addition to the NaNoWriMo community, and they’re pretty neat in terms of motivation and feeling a sense of achievement. I couldn’t help but feel like there were some missed opportunities, however – so I recently mined reddit’s NaNoWriMo community for ideas on what badges are needed to fill in the gaps. Here are just are just a handful that we came up with!
Most folks who participate in NaNo struggle with sleep and often have a love-hate relationship with it. Love it when it happens, hate that it takes away from perfectly good free time we could be writing! Now there is an added bonus, which is adaptability! Congratulations, we are probably building some mutant race that is less reliant on sleep 100 years from now!
badgeYou have kids, a job, a spouse, pets, friends who want to spend time with you (selfish!), side projects, front projects, project projects. You’re insane. And should probably run for President or Dictator or something. I don’t have much to say about this badge because I literally have no idea how you do it.
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This is the multitasker’s natural enemy. The Lone Wolf (I have to admit that I fall into this category), understands their limitations when it comes to focus and dedication. It is for this reason they must, regrettably, cut you out of their life for up to 30 days – BUT – it might not take that long. In fact, the more you leave me alone, the more likely you are to see me later in the month!
Saving and saving your work often is not really going to help you out if your computer chooses the month of November to Bite the Big One. Nor will it un-corupt your text file should you be so unfortunate to be in such a situation. HOWEVER, you, proud badge wearer, were not deterred. Okay, maybe you were for a little bit. Crying is perfectly acceptable in this kind of situation. But instead of giving up, you trudged forward and you know what, you probably wrote a better story because of it. Good on you!
There is a very good chance that you earned badge #4 in a previous year. For this reason, you do not f%#* around! You are the model Wrimo who has mastered Google Docs, has more back up USB drives than James Bond, and have figured out how to automate emailing your work to yourself as you write it. You are also the file-backup-or-else apostle, spreading the good word to anyone who will listen.
Hey, guess what? You do an awesome, amazing thing every year that makes you feel really good and creative and fulfilled. And you want the world to know! You get this badge because there is nothing that will squash your passion for NaNoWriMo and telling literally anyone who will listen about it, and… perhaps most importantly… what you are writing this year.
I am not sure this badge is one you always want. I mean, I guess it really depends on your story. Are you purposely keeping this a mystery? Are you going to get around to it when you can feel your fingers again? I bet you could get a good 100 words or so out of at least telling us what color hair they have and if they are cross-eyed or not. I’m sure you’ll get around to it eventually! (Just please don’t spend two chapters describing a door)
I have to imagine we have all felt this pain at some point. Your character wanders out of the scene out of boredom or HEY! there is something shiny over there! Let’s go look at IT! This can be frustrating under normal circumstances, but when it comes to NaNoWriMo, I highly encourage you to just go with it and wear this badge with pride. So what if you might need to be committed later…?
This badge is earned by those writers who hit a wall. A tall wall. A thick one. A wall made of dead Persians – you know, the usual kinds of walls. And these writers struggle, and struggle, and then it happens. The block breaks apart and you suddenly know what needs to happen! Cue the joy, cue the relief, and cue earning this badge for sticking with it and working out the kinks!
Unlike the Writer Unblocked badge, this is a wholesale acknowledgement and acceptance of the fact the story you started with is just not going to work. You’re not feeling it, your characters are cardboard, it’s a struggle to write every word. This badge if for those people who nuke their first idea and then proceed to run with another, kicking ass and taking names all along the way!
This badge is for all those generous souls who take time out of their writing to help talk a friend, writing buddy or even a random Wrimo off the ledge – be it from having an existential crisis, wanting to edit prematurely, or give up altogether. These badge holders are a big part of what makes NaNoWriMo so special – we have built a community that welcomes every level of writer, along with the entire spectrum of ambition levels – from overachiever to Master Procrastinator. We all support each other in our own way, and none is more important than you, Mr. Ledge-Talker-Off’er. Keep telling people to ‘Hang In There!’
If you do NaNo long enough, this is bound to be your fate eventually. You spend all of October pumped and ready to go, and then BAM, you start sniffling. At first, there is denial – I’m fine, I swear. It’s just allergies or something. And then the sneezing starts, and before you know it, you’re at that stage of illness that puts you thisclose to making a deal with the devil to get better. Oh, and you’re still slogging through putting words on paper, but you are DEDICATED! And my, what interesting chapters you wrote under the influence of cold meds. This badge is for all those who persevere during illness in November!
Set Condition 1 throughout the ship! It is the last godsdamn day and you are SO CLOSE! You can’t write until your second-shift job releases you from their evil clutches and then it’s a mad dash to 50,000 words before midnight local time. This badge is for the people who MAKE IT HAPPEN when it’s down to the wire and all hope seems to be lost. Nope, not today, November. Not today.
When you sit down and decide to dedicate hours to pouring out your heart and soul until you reach a goal of a ridiculous amount of words, there are going to be times where you question reality. Am I Real? What does it mean to be real? Am I God? Do my characters live? What days is it? And where am I while I’m asking all these pertinent questions… It is a serious drag when you go through this existential, transcendental experience and still have to find time to do laundry before work on Monday. Take this badge, you earned it!
Last, and absolutely not least, is this astonishment badge for actually doing the thing you set out to do. You may think think this is just for first-timers, but you’d be wrong. Every time you accomplish this task, you should be proud and a little astonished of yourself. You, a busy human being who has a life completely apart from writing, told a story that was worth writing. You accomplished something that is going to last forever – that story is now fact, and YOU DID IT. You made the thing! Congratulations! Be astonished with yourself!!
Eve is the founder of Some Nerd Girl and the author of urban fantasy novel Children of the Fallen and science fiction novel Colony One. She has been writing since the age of 13 and has been flying her nerd flag for the past 16 years. Fandoms include Star Wars, Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica. Basically if it has ‘star’ in it, she’ll give it a shot. You can visit her website at www.somenerdgirl.com. And she really wishes this whole article counted towards her Word Count…
Thanks to the efforts of Anthony Edwards and Robert Carradine, being a nerd has shifted from a negative connotation to a positive one. Nerds are knowledgeable and passionate when it comes to specific topics and cultures, and almost always happy to share that passion with others. Nerds frequently flock together, both online and in person. Being able to share your passions with others can be an amazing way to gain more knowledge and find an even deeper love of your nerd-love.
Sometimes, though, there’s just one problem.
Sometimes not everyone in a flock is actually part of the nerd-gang. Sometimes folks just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Most often these people are the partners of an actual of nerd, sometimes they are friends who are coerced in to involvement because of tangentially related hobbies. Sometimes they just look the part. The end result is the same – Nerd by Association.
It starts off innocently enough. You’re sitting with your partner, having drinks with friends or perhaps picking up the goodies in your box at the comic book store. A topic is mentioned. Your partner lights up, this is his time to shine! Your friends begin chatting, discussing their topic and the history and the nuances and how some celebrity is ruining everything, whatever. You try to pay attention, but your mind wanders. You sit there, smiling and nodding politely. You even recognize a name or two. In the end, you still have no idea what’s happening. Next time you spend time with the group, the conversation starts again. Maybe the conversational loop happens a few times more. Time passes, and soon your friends begin to associate you with the conversation about The Thing.
Then, unexpectedly, your Facebook notification alerts you: someone has shared something on your wall. What could it be? It’s an article! About The Thing! With that one tiny blip on your smartphone, it has begun. All those times thinking about your grocery list while your friends talk about their Nerd item has finally twisted and mutated, and now your friends think that because you’re always around when they’re talking about The Thing, well, surely that means you like The Thing too! Congratulations, you are a Nerd by Association.
So what do you do? There are a few options.
Re-enact Shannon Doherty’s rant in the elevator in Mallrats about not giving a shit which characters are crossing over in limited edition foil covers. At the very least, you’ll impress them with your grasp of jargon. The downside of this is that you may make your friends feel bad and awkward that they’ve spent all this time misunderstanding your involvement, that you may not have been enjoying hanging out with them while they discuss The Thing. You may feel that spending time with your friends is great no matter the topic, but they may not.
Continue to smile and nod and think about your grocery list when the topic comes up, maybe with less enthusiasm but still grinning and bearing it the whole time. Probably the least effective option, but also the least amount of effort. I take this path when it comes to zombies. I love horror movies, I love indie movies. I have done Special Effects makeup for various friends. My name is Barbara. You would think I would love zombies. I actually hate them. I hate that no matter how hopeful the characters are, eventually they’re totally boned. Even if they escape whatever shack they’re holed up in, they’re still outnumbered by zombies and chances are pretty darned slim that the hordes are ever going to go away. Zombie stories are awful. The only two zombie movies I own are Shawn of the Dead, and The Undead.: the only zombie movies I can think of that have mostly-happy endings. When people start with the whole “They’re going to get you, Barbara…” I take the path of least resistiance. I nod. I grin. I bear it. The effort to change the image of me as a zombie fan is too much for me to even try.
The third option, of course, is to embrace the Nerddom. You may not love The Thing, you may never watch more than one episode in a year. The key is to find something in it that you do find interesting, and work with it. Let’s use an example of another Nerd by Association. My darling boyfriend enjoys WWE Wrestling. He and my friends can talk for hours about how the story writers can spin this character, how this one is going to have to win in order to set up this other guy, the insanity of some guy being able to lift up the 450 lb monster and throw him over his shoulder. It’s rather interesting to see him study all the possibilities and the strategy of making celebrities out of people who do nothing but flop around on the ground. Somehow, I got tied up in this. I knew enough about wrestling from when I was a kid to chime in on occasion, just to keep involved in conversations so that people wouldn’t start asking me “What’s wrong?” because I wasn’t talking (If you’re a chatty-cathy like me, you get asked this a LOT). I didn’t much pay attention to wrestling until my fella surprised me with tickets to the WWE Raw filming in Pittsburgh. “Oh cool, how fun,” I said, willing to grin and bear it. We’re partners. I drag him to stuff all the time. Turnabout is only fair play.
Committed to a night of checking my phone and ignoring the action, off we went. Once we got through the merchandise sales area, waited far too long for an overpriced soda and popcorn, and met the hilariously drunk Yinzer-girl sitting beside us, we settled in. The action started…and within a few minutes I finally found an angle I could agree with. Wrestling plotlines, various degrees of acting and athleticism, none of that really hit with me.
What did hit with me, however, was watching mostly naked and ripped dudes running around for 3 hours. Ok. Now I get this. Now this makes sense. Suddenly plotlines mean a little more – they mean the guys I like are coming on soon. Plotlines mean that the moron who will never cease his yammering, is going to get beaten up by one of the attractive ones. It even turns out that occasionally you actually do get to see some impressive stuff, like a 450 pound dude getting flung over a shoulder like a sack of laundry. All of it means I get to see topless dudes for 3 hours every Monday night, and my boyfriend approves. And that? That I can get behind.
It turns out that being a Nerd by Association can be a pretty interesting chance to broaden your horizons. You may never enjoy some things, or you may never be able to escape some associations no matter how much you protest. Every now and then, though, you’ll be exposed to something that really does interest you. Then it will be your turn to make someone else a Nerd by Association.
Barbie O’Havoc has been considered a nerd since the first time she pissed someone off for having a weird opinion. Since then, she’s been spending her time indulging in the surprisingly expensive habits of reading trashy vampire novels and hitting people while playing roller derby. Both of her main hobbies have led to a love of terrible puns, much to everyone’s dismay.
Barbie O’ also loves coffee and local restaurants, and occasionally rambles about both on the Johnstown Food Blog.
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