life during NaNoWriMo

First off, I'm going to bid adieu to the Word Count listing I have in the right hand column. Its existence was to spur me on to write 50,000 words ASAP, which wound up taking me well over six months, culminating only one week short of the start of NaNoWriMo. So it has accomplished its mission, but you will no longer see any numbers in brackets at the end of my posts. That much has been accomplished.

So far, I'm off to a fairly strong start, although that is to be expected of myself. My problem will usually appear sometime mid-week of week 2, around the 20,000 mark, when it gets to be a real drag to write nearly 2,000 words on a weeknight - probably on Mondays, when Raw is on. I'll try to build up a solid lead so that I can maneuver around, say, impromptu freelance assignments, but I have a feeling things won't go as smoothly as they are right now. Yeah, I know, it's the first friggin' day and I should calm down. But trust me, I know there a wall out there, a wall of my own building, and I'm gonna hit it head on, most likely sooner than later.

After NaNo, I promise myself to read a good book, perhaps to wash away all the crap I've been producing over the last month (and judging by the first 5,000 words, it will be crap. Believe you me.) And maybe lay off the historical fiction for a good long while, and return to my usual bitching...um, I mean editorializing, of my little corner of the universe. On the other hand, I will be sure to blog out my Survivor Series predictions and reactions. Certain things are unavoidable.

animal bonding

There was a book review in Saturday's Gazette for "Dog Man: An Uncommon Life on a Faraway Mountain", by Martha Sherrill, which relates the story of Morie Sawataishi, who reestablished the Akita breed after WWII (at which point there were no more than 16 dogs left.)

What blew my mind was this bit:

When his dogs die, he preserves their pelts as totems - a primal, primitive
connection to an object of love.

"I touch he pelts," he says, 'and I remember everything."

His commitment is such that he has never sold a dog, not once. He gives
puppies away as gifts, or barters one for services, but to take money for a dog
strikes him as a violation of the proper, mutually selfless relationship between
man an dog, where you feel "honoured to even possess such an incredible animal,
much less be loved by him."

Wow. If only all animal breeders felt that way, maybe shelters wouldn't be overflowing, the expression "puppy mill" would cease to exist...and pigs would fly, I know. Still, it's an incredibly noble sentiment, one that people need to hear.

Friday in six: Paid to prepare words for others.

Saturday: Carrefour Laval, more for him again.

Sunday: Snowflakes like styrofoam mean further hibernation.

(115)

american psycho

...for what it's worth, I believe Paul Owen is alive and well in London.

I'm also quite glad to see that the "I can drop a running chainsaw dow an elevator shaft and kill the girl who's trying to run away" isn't actually in the book. Because that was ludicrous.

(50)

not quite the cat's pyjamas

I read Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s “The Cat Who Came in from the Cold” yesterday. I picked it up because the book I initially wanted to purchase had seemingly disappeared from the shelves in Indigo last night. Having just rediscovered the wonderful “The Fur Person”, I was open to further feline fiction.

Was it the influence of “How Novels Work”, which I just finished, or was it author weakness? Either way, I had difficulty getting really absorbed in the story (and that’s a rare occurrence); I would drift away with Billi in his mango tree, or on the prowl, when suddenly a clumsy description would appear, jarring me back to the words on the page. I wondered whether it was Masson’s strong non-fiction skills interfering. I had read “When Elephants Weep” by the same author, and I had no such complaints. I shared many of the author’s views. This should have been a perfect fit. But he seemed so preoccupied with acquainting readers with aspects of Hindu life, which should have been entirely normal sights and two-foot behaviour to Billi, rather than a revelation. It bordered on condescension, as if I couldn’t be trusted to explore things I was not familiar with on my own, as if I needed to be taken by the hand. They weren't descriptions, they were definitions. Also, the story itself should be opaque; yet in this case, I could catch glimpses of the underlying framework, or of certain stylistic tools.

Maybe I read the book at a moment in my life when I am too absorbed with writing. I wanted to enjoy it, but I came away slightly disappointed. I think I will let it lie for a bit; hopefully, its rediscovery at a later date may redeem it. Besides, I've just realized that there's another, earlier novel, by another author, with the same title. Perhaps that's where the story I want to read is really hidden.

Today: Nineteen inches of glorious widescreen LCD.