Black Friday

I hope that you have all recovered from any over eating, hangovers or family arguments that may have erupted.

I didn't see it live, but if you had watched the whole Macy's parade, you could have seen the nation get RickRolled by the Cartoon Network. You can see it here.

Now you can take some time to recover from that.

And next – leftovers. For dinner that is.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving.

Sit back, relax, watch a parade; watch a football game if you can find a good one; cheer for your high school football team; eat some turkey or whatever fits your holiday tradition – but not too much; fight off the tryptophan; give thanks and be thankful.

I hope everyone is safe and satisfied and has some things to be thankful for.

I am thankful for my wife, my life, my family and my friends.

And if you have 18½ minutes to spare, watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_7C0QGkiVo

Trivia Question: what do Richard Nixon and his White House Library, Rose Mary Woods and Arlo Guthrie have in common?

Happy Thanksgiving!

As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.

So I hit 50 and my brain shuts down, is that how it works?

That could explain why I disappeared from here for more than a week. But actually I think that maybe it was the fact that this NaNoWriMo thing has taken up all of my useable brain function. Apparently I can’t try to crank out words, however lamely, and blog at the same time. OK, that and the dozen or so doctor visits my wife and I have had over the past three weeks.

I’ve definitely been distracted while working on this thing, maybe because I’m still not in love with it, even if I do like the idea and the characters.* I am getting a decent word count, though. Now if only they made sense.

So, maybe I can get back to better blogging when November is over, something with more content than I’ve managed lately. For now, with the holiday tomorrow, I’ll keep it simple.

I hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving, and a safe and traffic jam free one.

*The rules say that the NaNovel has to be started Nov. 1^st, and I didn’t really have anything not yet started that I really wanted to do. In case you were wondering why I was working on something that I don’t seem to like very much.

Bring on the paleontologists

A friend told me about someone they know who almost died and they started counting their birthdays over again from that point. I guess that makes me three years old.

Officially, however, I am 50 years old today.

Emotionally, well, let’s just leave that one alone.

I think there’s some hill or something that I’m supposed to be worried about. If I’m over it, then all the uphill, hard part is over so it should be easy from here on in. And if I’m not over it, the top should be in sight, or I’m standing on it. Whichever one it is it seems to be a pretty good spot to be in.

At least that’s my position and I’m sticking to it.

Time to make the word count

I went missing from here again for awhile. Sorry 'bout that.

I had a few rough days and I've been kind of tired. Both my wife and I have had a lot of appointments lately, not to mention some bad days. I needed a few days in between doctors and such to recover. I had in mind to do some new things in November. I wanted to try some realignment - rethinking how I handled parts of my life and working out new strategies for moving forward. I also wanted to get some more content on this blog, and not just words. Well, best laid plans and all that. Life got in the way just a bit with me doing things in general, with day to day stuff, and in a big way with me blogging. My brain has been fried, so no coherent thoughts on here.

But I'm still working on it. I have the ideas about life, but I need to put it into words and deeds.

Writing-wise I've had some lousy days, but I've also had a few good ones. Now, I'm not saying that I'm writing anything great. I'm just saying that the words are there.

I am embracing the NaNoWriMo ideal of just writing - no editing, no deleting, no spell-check even, just typing. So, if a finished first draft of a novel is draft 1, and a very rough draft is draft 0, then if I get this thing done I will have draft -5.

What I have is not just in need of polishing, it is in need of, well, fire-polishing in the cleansing heat at the heart of the sun.

Low Word Count Weekend

This will not be a profound post. That may not be a surprise to some of you.

I have been in a bit of a mental fog for a few days, so I need to sort that out before any deep thoughts come your way on here.

I will say that I actually liked what I wrote on Friday. It's not great, it needs polishing, but it is a scene that fits and does what needs to be done. Saturday, however, I will refer to as No Word Count Saturday. I wrote not a word. I said I was in a fog.

I got a surprising 1200 some words today, just describing a location and modifying a scene. So, not as productive a weekend as I had hoped. I'll just have to wait and see what next week will bring.

The first Tuesday after the first Monday in November

So go vote, if you haven't already.

NaNoWriMo Day 3

Just keeping Monday more or less light and frivolous.

Went with my wife to the doctor today. Still, with my sleep pattern I was writing last night after midnight as well as this evening. So I got through another day with decent word count, even though some of it will definitely not make it into a final product. I like parts of it, but not the whole thing yet. I need to get further into the story and introduce some more characters. Maybe then I'll like it better. It seemed OK in my head but not OK as much when I started to write it.

Oh well, we'll see. I do like the characters though. They're a lot of fun and I think interesting.

Some day, someone else can tell me what they think of them.

Day one done and day two done

Day 1 went OK. I got a good start, even if none of it made any sense. I got a decent word count, but I am not in love with this story. It just seems to be missing something. Oh well, I’ll just wait and see what happens.

Day 2 was pretty good as well. I expanded the beginning - I got an idea while I was being used as a bed by a cat. Then of course I went back to what I had thought of before that. Either way, I have a beginning. I also have a few other things going on and I am starting to see some potential, but it still isn’t really there yet.

So, I have a decent word count. Emphasis on the count. This is still utter crap. Of course, the idea of NaNoWriMo is to focus on quantity, not quality. Just get it done and edit later.

Well, that’s where I am, quantity, but I want quality. As much as I don’t love this story, writing it is fun. Well, once I get past the spot I’m working on at the moment it will be.

OK, even this is fun, but the rest will be more fun.

The game is afoot!

12:00 November 1^st. NaNoWriMo 2008 begins.

I have, for now, moved to a default position. The pseudo-steampunk story and the silly fantasy still have no plots. Therefore I am going to start on an old idea, so old that I have no notes in electronic version for this one. I have a semblance of a plot, a decent framework anyway; a few characters but only one has a name, and that is a last name, and he doesn’t actually appear in the body of the novel; and I have already removed one character before I have even started.

It is, since you ask, a horror novel. Not the fun story that I wanted to do, but I like the idea and the characters.

Now on with the writing.

Good luck to one and all, whether you are in this crazy game or not.