Thought-Drive

In a previous post, I mentioned a resolution to double the writing I had already completed this month, which at the time was two blog posts (one here, one on bleacher report) and three chapters of the novel. On yesterday evening, I fulfilled that goal. For those of you so inclined, at least some of the evidence is here . The chapters (which now number six and an introduction) you'll just have to take my word for. It's coming along. I told a friend about how surreal the process was of taking a chapter from its roughest, least realized state to something I was much, much happier with. And so, one piece at a time, I'm building me a road. The destination I've always been confident in knowing, but the dips and curves, the climate and conditions, those have always been foggy, to use a pun. The other day, on an email group I'm plugged into, one of those terribly long streams was compiled and compiled and sent to me. I try to keep abreast of such things in as far as figur...

I wish these hiatuses of mine indicated some great, fiery period of productivity, but really, how little I commit to this blog has nothing to do with how active I'm being otherwise. I did start the novel, successfully turning NaNoWriMo into NaNoStarMo (see what I did there? magic). I'm ten thousand words in and mostly happy with what those words are, their order and arrangement. Working with a friend in his scene shop at his theater, I was holding a screw gun, staring down at a nailed together structure that would, once install and painted, be the wall of a set and realized that we do sort of the same thing. Emphasis on sort of. There's a handy manual filled with useful knowledge like invincible knots and saw horse designs and how to hang something from the ceiling so it swings, doesn't swing, or can even raise up and down after being affixed. For writers... well, I guess you could say the book hasn't been written yet, ironically. Like today at work I saw a flye...

Sometimes, when people tell me it's this month or that month, I wish I could retaliate with some well-prescribed barb, but mostly it is out of my own lack of watching or reading or embracing any sort of news. I don't know how long November has been "National Novel Writing Month" (I also just figured out how to say the acronym) but it seems like for the past couple years I'm re-reminded at the end of October. Thankfully, even people that both know I'm a writer and that November is what it is don't ask me if I'll be writing a novel. Not that I'd go so far as to tell them off, but it would avoid the slight mote of sadness that I won't be. This year I have an excuse, though. I wrote a novel this year already. Actually, I wrote four. None of them took less than a month to pen, but they were all started after January 1st and drafted before now. I also sort of cheated. Because as I'm finding out with the new idea I'm working on, from the con...