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Sunday, October 31, 2010

Second Thoughts


This was totally supposed to be posted yesterday, but when I logged on my computer today there it was, still in the 'create a new post' window.  Oops.

Sorry for not updating yesterday... got busy with headaches and birthdays, which after thought might've made a better blog title.  Oh well.  I watched the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear this morning, and I was very happy with it, especially Stewart's speech at the end of the rally (here).  I went immediately from watching it on my couch to going out and canvassing neighborhoods with my fiance, who is a volunteer for Jon Hulbard for congress.  I feel like I've done my part for the day.  The rally was, I believe, a huge success, and I really hope that it just makes people think a bit more than they did yesterday, and realize that we are not, as Jon Stewart said, living in cable TV.  Cable television should not influence us as much as it does, and if ever we disagree with the opinions shown in myriad news networks, we can always simply change the channel.

About the book, today I finished reading the final 250 pages, and it gets so much better at the end!  Just... just so much better.  The plot, the story, the writing, everything about it, and I attribute that to when I started writing every day.  Practice, any practice, helps.  Writing blog posts helps me write novels.  Writing papers helps me write novels.  Writing novels especially helps me write novels.  If my writing improved so drastically over the course of one book, I'm very excited to read my dungeon crawl.  That's the most recent example of my writing, other than a scene I turned in for class, which when I reread it I was surprised at how tight and cohesive the writing was. 

One last thing, and then I'm out for tonight...  I met with some of my fellow Glendale NaNaWriMo writers last night at bookmans, and it was a lot of fun!  They had an exercise where you wrote your plot and everyone else wrote a twist on that plot, and that was the only thing that was a little less than fun...  I consider myself, at this point, a novelist, and I have a novel plotted out for NaNo.  I'm not one of those people that's going to be stuck wondering how ever will I come up with 50,000 words.  I already have my plot, my characters, my story.  It's the difference, and I hope no one takes this personally, between a professional and a hobbyist.  I get the idea that some of these NaNo writers only write for one month out of the year, and that's November.  I've been writing since last November, and I'll tell you what, I wrote a heck of a lot more than 50k words last month.  I'm not trying to diminish the efforts of anyone trying to write 50k words in one month.  It's a very heroic effort, especially if you don't write during the year other than that.  It just feels to me that I'm writing a novel - something that I can polish and send to publishers, while others are just looking to write anything that comes to mind, as long as it totals 50k words.  That, to me, is not a novel.

Disagree?  Please, leave a comment.  I welcome other opinions, and if I have erred in some way, I want at least the chance to fix it.  Thank you, as always, for stopping by my little corner of the internet, and I hope you're all having wonderful nights, and continue to do so tomorrow night on Halloween.  Be safe, and thank you!  See you Monday. 

1 comment:

  1. Wow just like our conversation last night/this morning. We really are in sync! ;-)

    Anyway, I managed to crank out chapter 1. I am thoroughly unhappy with the 2nd half of it, but I am considering this my zero draft and I can always go back and fix it later.

    I am happy however, with how much writing I have gotten done!

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