Na NO

"Yes, yes, around your head. Not vertically, horizontally."

"Thank goodness. Vertically it was gripping my chin. I wouldn't have been able to eat and that would've been a disaster."

"Now be still and stop your silly wisecracks."

I wasn't quite sure how I'd let myself be talked into this scientific experiment, but I had, and there I was, in the lab, with this -- this -- thingy around my head, horizontally, not vertically.

I'm not a scientist. Don't expect me to know its name. It was green and had the texture of stale spaghetti. So it was a thingy, and it was tied around my head and supposed to measure my brain waves.

Why?

Aha. Because it's November.

What's November got to do with it?

Well, November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. And every writer should be in a frenzy this month, trying to get down 2,000 words a day to complete a 50,000 word novel within the span of the month.

And I wasn't doing that.

EVERYONE I knew was. They'd spent the whole of October prepping and now were in a mad frenzy of writing.

Except me.

I was plodding along, entering daily contests sometimes, doing a blog entry or two -- but not NaNoing.

And my scientifically minded cousin wanted to know why, when my entire peer group was doing a particular activity, I was the rebel and not doing it. Was it the neurons in my brain went backward, or was my hippocampus a rhinocampus instead or something?

Anyway, she said she'd rig me up to this machine for 12 hours to find out.

She had a spare key to the lab and chose a time when she knew there would be nobody else there. She had built most of the machine at home, but some essential stuff was apparently in the lab and not movable. I'd have to sleep there, but there was a comfortable enough couch.

The machine was beeping ... apparently my brain was quite an active one. She fiddled some knobs and pressed some buttons.

"Comfy?"

"Under the circumstances, fairly."

"Now, let us record this for all posterity. Objective of the experiment - to measure the brain waves of a writer who won't NaNo, to ascertain why she won't NaNo. The experiment will have been successful if, at the end of twelve hours, I can declare: you won't NaNo because --- and it will be the truth you didn't know about yourself."

"Have you finished recording?"

"Yes, and I'm sending it as a voice text to my Professor."

"I thought nobody was supposed to know we're here."

"Oh, Prof. doesn't count as somebody. He's a harmless lamb."

She left the lab, locking me in for the night.

I was already curled on the sofa, my head with thingy on the pillow.

I'm not sure when I fell asleep. Quite quickly, actually.

And in my sleep, I had a dream.

I dreamt characters. I dreamt a setting. I dreamt a plot. I dreamt sub-plots.

She arrived in the morning with egg sandwiches, coffee and a chocolate donut for me, and orange juice for herself. Scientists need to stay healthy during an ongoing experiment.

My brain waves had generated millions of little dots and dashes on the machine. She said she'd take a couple of hours to decipher them and give me the reason.

I gobbled my breakfast, swallowed the coffee and sprinted home. I switched on my computer and I began to type.

I typed out my characters, setting, plot and sub-plots.

I typed and I typed and I typed.

The weeks that followed were a blur.

The agents, lining at my door. The publishers, lining at my agent's door. The book deal and movie rights. The awards. The autograph-signings. The marketing of the merchandise. The lecture tours.

Everyone was happy. My parents, my grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends. Everyone except -- my scientific cousin and her harmless lamb of a Professor.

You see, they're scientists.

The stated objective of the experiment was to reveal the reason for my not NaNoing.

Writing the most popular book in the entire history of publishing didn't come anywhere into it.

As far as they were concerned, the experiment had gone terribly, terribly wrong.