NaNoWriMo? Start now!
October is the tenth month in the year yet its name October, of course means the eighth month which it was in the Roman calendar. Why? Simple. The Romans didn’t count the winter months of January and February. They all merged into a wintry, damp blur.
Mark Twain, the American writer and author of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, considered October to be a dangerous month, particularly for speculating in the stock market-followed by all the other months, of course. Is he correct? There is more to this than we might like to think. The theory is that financial stocks tend to decline during the month of October. This is called The October Effect but it is considered mainly to be a psychological expectation rather than an actual occurrence. However, potential investors may be nervous during October because the dates of some very large historical market crashes occurred during this month. Think about it. The great crash of 1987 occurred on October 19, and saw prices fall about 20% in a single day. Black Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday all occurred in October 1929, after which came the Great Depression.
But there is often an impeding sense of gloom as we approach the latter end of the year.
Within the world of folklore October does not resonate with joy, happiness, and expectation either. Folklore explains why "the days shorten and the clocks go back; battles are commemorated, fire celebrations begin and Hallowe’en sees ghosts and witches at large all over the country.”
In temperate climates, October was always a time of preparation. As writers, how many of us plan for NaNoWriMo in November and then find life gets in the way? If anyone signs up for this formally, or plans to do it informally, as a personal challenge, fifty thousand words over the course of a thirty-day month is daunting and it’s easy to become distracted. But it’s also an opportunity.
We might need to create space in the diary by staying at home more often; it will save money and release brain time for writing. We can create a snug space to entice us to settle and allow our imaginations to roam. What better way to avoid late autumn’s dreariness than in our own space and in our own imagined world?
Just as our ancestors had to prepare for winter by harvesting the grains and fruits of autumn, we can prepare for our new writing venture. Who knows what harvest that might bring?
I’ll leave you with an image of October’s flower; the calendula.
Happy month!
