Waiting for the hammer

Cathy asked me this evening what was going on since I hadn't blogged since Wednesday. I wasn't having a problem, more like there's only so much creativity I can tap into during the run of a day. Since Wednesday I've probably written about 8,000 to 10,000 words of my book. Which is quite a nice run, by my standards. I rather doubt that will continue, but I was on a roll. And you don't mess with creative streaks (I just finished watching Bull Durham, so I have the speech about streaks rattling around inside my head right now). When you get a burst where the words are flowing and you know exactly what each character is going to and say, you write until your fingers bleed.

Because you never know....it could end at any moment and the next thing you know you're doing something like the little dude to the right of the page.

I suppose with the election call coming up in Newfoundland I should be getting excited. But honestly, I'm trying to think of a less interesting, more anti-climatic election in recent Newfoundland history. And that's saying something. For all the bullshit you read about how interesting and complex Newfoundland politics can be, most elections are deadly predictable. The last one I can think of that was truly, majestically weird was in '89. Other than that, if you didn't know who was going to win the day the election was called, then you weren't paying attention. The only thing up in the air was how many seats the party in question was going to win.

Election '07 is going to be, if possible, even more boring. When elections are called, reporters normally start pools to guess who is going to win each seat. The person who gets the most seats right, wins. I wonder if there will be any pools this year? I almost doubt it.

Having seen the moves that Williams has pulled in the last couple of weeks - the Hebron deal, the energy plan, buying into White Rose and even releasing the MHA spending report which is managing to make the Liberals look worse than the Tories - I've come to a conclusion. I told it to a friend of mine back home last week and he agreed.

It's not that Williams is trying to win. It's a given pretty much that he will. It's not that he's trying to win every seat. I would have said that was impossible as recently as six months ago. Now, I'm not so sure.

No, I honestly think he's trying to eliminate the concept of opposition parties in Newfoundland and Labrador for the next decade. At least. It's quite possible he could destroy both parties (believe it or not, the Liberals are far more vulnerable. The NDP have a better chance of holding Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi than the Liberals do in holding any of their seats). Not only would that leave him unopposed in '07, it will make it almost impossible for those parties to rally any serious challenge to the Tories in '11, the next provincial election. They simply won't have the money, resources or profile that a party gets just from sitting in opposition.

It's funny. Nunavut doesn't have opposition parties either. Instead, it works using a consensus government. All the MLAs work together to make decisions. Individuals might oppose a decision, but there are no political parties that oppose the premier or the cabinet. So Newfoundland may well be just like Nunavut on October 10. Except the consensus will come from one man.

Hope you're all ready for the hammer to fall, folks.

Stuck in neutral

So I'm fighting through a wee tough of the ole writer's block right now, as is evident by the fact that I'm doing a terrible Irish accent in a blog post. There's nothing much happening up here right now that I haven't already talked about previously. It's getting warming, the daylight is becoming longer and stuff is starting to melt all over the place.

And I know there was a budget back in Newfoundland, but I find myself oddly ambivalent about it. Nobody seems particularly upset about it, which is pretty much what a pre-election budget is supposed to do. Offer a little something to everybody. The only people who are pissed off are the Opposition, who really have nothing to roast Williams on.

And all is quiet in the private life. Nice, lovely weekend. Walked the dog, played some Wii, did some reading. Terrible sedate stuff. No drama, nothing to write about.

Which, don't get me wrong, is just fine with me. I'd sooner it be all quiet and happy in the homestead and have a touch of writer's block, than drama and something to write about.

Actually, now that I have a bit of the writer's block, I felt oddly compelled to go back and take a bit of a look at the werewolf novel that I started writing last November as part of the novel challenge. I promised myself that I would go back, fix it up and finish it. I don't know what I was hoping to do then...probably throw it off to a few publishers.

But it really is terrible. Several writers recommend going back and editing only after you have several months go by so you can get a fresh perspective. My new perspective is that I need to be shot in the head as it might improve my writing.

I don't know. It's not a bad idea, the werewolf in the arctic angle. It's just the rest is quite...stupid. And I'm not entirely certain how to make it work. Somewhere in storage is a copy of Stephen King's "On Writing". I really want to read that now, because I have the feeling it could help. I might just go and buy another copy when I get home this summer, if things still remain desperate.

I also have a new idea rattling around in my brain that I'm not quite certain what to do with. I have the idea (a time travel story) and the kind of world this story would be in. Which is all well and good, but I have absolutely no idea what characters to place in this world, or what their story would be yet. I've had the idea for a couple of weeks and still nothing has come to me.

sigh

I like writing, I really do. But there are times like this, when it feels like I have cotton wool in my brain, that I really wish I was illiterate.

50,122

So I went over the top last night. In a fashion that will surprise no one who has ever been my editor, I was well ahead on the project (at one point I was more than two days ahead of where I needed to be), but ended up getting the final section I needed to crack 50,000 finished and posted at 10:30 last night, a mere 90 minutes before deadline.

As I said, that's not the end of the story. There's still more to come, including that ending I don't really have worked out yet. But a surprising amount of the story came to me while I was sitting in front of the computer. So who knows, maybe the ending will come to me in a similar fashion. And yeah, I'll probably keep posting sections up on the blog for the three of you actually reading it. Just don't expect it every day. I have an assignment due in a week in my online course.

By the way, thanks to everyone who participated, specifically Dups and OM. I know how hectic their lives are so the fact they even attempted this was brave on their parts. They hey didn't hit 50,000, but they got started. Next year, who knows. And regardless, they always kept me motivated, just on the off-chance one of them would show up and plunk down 20,000 words in one shot. So thanks for the motivation guys.

And for those who expressed interest, but didn't get anywhere, well, I'll try and be better organized next year. And don't worry, this was at least my fourth try and the first time I got more than 3,000 words written.

Oh yeah, next time. I think I might have another go at this next year (that sound is Cathy banging her head off a wall). It was...fun.

Towards the finish

For those of you reading my grand epic over here, and that would be all three of you, you may have noticed that there are now less than two days left and I have less than 2,500 words until I make the 50,000 word count. It got dicey a bit there on the weekend and for the first time i actually fell behind where I need to be. But I should be able to finish it, if for no other reason than OM will fly up here and smack me repeatedly in the head with her hand that has all the rings should I fail this close to the finish line. (Om has the gift of hitting me in the head in just the right way to assure I get a migraine. It's a real gift that I hope she shares with her husband).

What should also be obvious is that the story isn't going to wrap up in the next 2,500 words. It's going to take probably another 20,000 or more. So I have another deadline, and that's to get it finished before I head home for Christmas, which is December 20. So we'll see what happens.

However, since I still have all these words left, I've been trying to work out what plot points to include. One of them is whether or not to include a sex scene.

Family and friends are no doubt heading for the hills. Especially when you consider that the book has taken a slightly weird twist in the last 7,000 words or so. There's also this simple fact - that people tend to infer what they read on a book onto the author. Stephen King writes horror and no matter how many funny interviews people read about him, there's always going to be a large group that think he's kind of twisted. Christopher Moore writes some very funny books, ergo he's a funny guy. And so on.

The opposite is also true. If you try to write horror and it isn't scary, then you're not a very scary guy. Try to write comedy and suck, you're not very funny. And there are worse fates than not being very scary or funny.

But try and write a sex scene and it's crap....

So yeah, a touch nervous and reluctant to go in that direction. I've never tried that kind of writing before and I ought to, if for no other reason that this book is an extended writing exercise to figure out what areas of my writing need improvement (character development and scene setting are the two most obvious to me right now).

Still, as I'm rattling around the idea in my head of whether or not I should do it and if so, how is it going to work, that I didn't need to see this headline today.

Ow...

I'm sitting in a comfy chair in the bedroom with my feet up as I write this, watching the sun set in a nice blaze of orange over snow covered arctic hills. It's quite a nice view, I must say. One of the times I'm glad we moved from the 6-story, so we could get views like this.

Of course, it would be nicer if there wasn't at least 15 telephone and power wires obscuring the view. One of the reasons why there's no photo. The lines do take away something from it. Oh, and the tide is out, so there isn't a nice ocean between me and the hills, but rather muddy flats. Plus, it's a little after 3 p.m. and the sun is going down. Best not to dwell on that.

sigh I really do know how to suck the enjoyment out of a nice scene without even trying. It's a gift.

Cathy's out right now walking Boo in the remaining daylight. We find it's easier to deal with him in the evenings if he's had a walk first to take some of the good out of him. I'm not out with them as I am arthritic cripple today. You wouldn't think curling could take that much of the good out of you, but if it's been awhile, the muscles you normally use can usually express their displeasure.

Curling also didn't end the way I had hoped. You know, you figure with a 6-2 lead and only two ends left to play you could win a game like that. Nope. Lost 8-6. Just a touch frustrating. But on the upside I think I finally learned to curl again this weekend. I also didn't win one of the two plane tickets that were up for grabs. But it was still a bit of fun, even though my muscles are disagreeing with me right now.

And now I should wrap this up and try and finish my word count for today. I'm happy with the way I'm doing. I'm doing a bit better than my word count each day, sort of a cushion should I miss a day or something. I have no idea if anyone is reading or not, but I'm relatively happy with the way it is going. I have it plotted out for the next couple of points. Still completely certain about the climax, but I have a couple of weeks to get that figured out.

More importantly, it actually feels like I can make it. Cocky thinking for a guy on Day 5, but it feels like I'm into a routine. I was tired last night, but I stayed up to make sure I got at least 2,000 words in before going to bed.

It doesn't mean I think it's going to get published or anything. It would be a miracle if that happened. But with a little luck I can give my friend Anne a very late Christmas gift...the book I promised her five years ago.

Writing challenge

So I have received some gentle nagging about where the writing blog is for the grand National Novel Writing Month challenge. Well, it's now set up and will be going full tilt as of November 1. You can go to Doomed Writing. Right now there's not much on the site, but hopefully that will change in a big hurry as of November 1.

Right now the people who I have sent invitations to are OM, Dups, Melissa, Corey and Curtis. Including me that's six people. If you still want to get in, either respond to this post or e-mail me at daehan hotmail dot com. You have until the end of October 31 to join in the chaos.

As for those of you not participating, I encourage you to swing by and see how we're doing. Feel free to leave comments, but please be kind. We're making it up as we're going along. Literally.

It ought to be fun. Good luck to all of us....

Novel challenge

So, for those of you who don't know what National Novel Writing Month is, go here, do a little quick reading and then pop back. We'll wait…

Are we done? Good.

I've been trying to tackle this son of a bitch for several years now. My good friend, and eerie psychic, Anne (she predicted myself and Cathy would get married about a month after we started dating) has been pestering me on this for years. It got to the point that she attempted to withhold a Christmas gift until I gave her the first chapter of my book. Others have also bugged me, most recently OM, who took a delicate little shot at me during that Book Tag meme by writing that the novel not yet written she'd most like to read would be mine.

The thing is, writing a novel is goddamn hard. I have lamented this before and will do so again, just for the record. It involves moving and using mental muscles that have never been used before. It's not enough to just have an idea, although count yourself fortunate if you have a good one. It involves developing a plot, story and character arcs and dialogue. Not to mention grand ideas such as theme if you want to get really fancy.

I've tried National Novel Writing Month before and failed. I normally get a couple of thousand words in and then the story dies a slow, miserable death of neglect. Yet, I am once again going to try it this year. Because I am that big of a masochist.

But this time, there are a few catches.

First, I'm going to be posting my writing online. No, not on this blog as it will clutter things up. I'm creating a separate blog, either on Blogger or Wordpress, where I will post my writing. I will try every day, but the goal is to hit 50,000 by the end of November. It will, just for the record, be unbelievable crap. So those of you with smoking jackets and pipes, who like looking for the themes in Sylvia Plath books and are eagerly awaiting the chance to make snide comments should wander elsewhere. It's a big Internet; feel free to get lost there.

Next, if I'm going to be miserable, who wants to join me? That's right, kids. It's a challenge. Not only do I want to see people do the National Novel Writing Month challenge, I want them to post their writing right alongside mine. I'll make the blog one of those where people you become a member and can also post. I'll work on the details. I still have two weeks.

The point being, those who take me up on this challenge get to post their writing up there with mine. And hopefully the quality and frequency will inspire us to get better.

This is the plan. Oh, and just in case this gets out of hand, as plans of mine sometimes tend to, we'll limit it to 12 people.

So...any takers?

Sigh...

A mostly relaxing weekend that went AWOL down the home stretch by:

1. Switchpod giving me small headaches by not doing what I want it to do.
2. A security update from Apple killing my wireless signal which meant considerable screwing around to get it going again.
3. Some anonymous git accusing me of plagerism in the last post (don't bother to look, it's been deleted).
4. Cathy not feeling the best (her cold has gone down into her lungs) which kept us up the night.
5. Having to go back to work today.

So yes, there is crankiness this morning. I'm sure it will pass. I'm just saying, not the happiest houshold in all the land right now.

By the way, just so I make this crystal bloody clear, I love people commenting on my blog. It makes me immeasurably happy that people take the time to read what I'm writing and feel the urge to comment on it. And I allow anonymous comments because, for the most part, they're benign and it's people without Blogger accounts and can't be bothered to get one (fair enough). But if people are going to take shots at me, insult me or accuse me of plagerism of all bloody things, then you're going to sign your name to it. Otherwise, the anonymous function disappears.

I'm a benevolent dictator. To a point. And this really isn't the morning to piss me off...