Bah Humbug!
Published November 27th, 2011 | 
This will be a very depressing holiday for me. I’m still unemployed. The freelance writing gigs have pretty much dried up of late. I am broke. My nineteen year-old niece found work at a farm and garden store, selling tractors and equestrian apparel. Of course, the only reason she got that job is because she has a lot of experience with horses. But you know you are truly pathetic when a kid less than half your age is making more money in one week than you will probably make in a month. Bankruptcy and starvation loom.
NaNoWhatMo?
Published November 3rd, 2011 | Here it is November. The stores already have the Christmas trees and Christmas Cards out on display. That means it’s time for National Novel Writing Month (yeah, I realize there’s this other holiday called Thanksgiving, but NaNoWriMo is a pretty big holiday for aspiring writers). I had intended to tackle NaNoWriMo again this year. I bailed on it last year after only a few days. I didn’t want to do it this year unless I could actually complete a book in the 30 days. I though I might be able to do it. The other morning, I was all ready to go. I had a dictionary, a thesaurus, my reading eyeglasses, earphones and a folder full of music. I even cleaned and dusted my keyboard.
Three days later, I still haven’t written a word. This isn’t writer’s block exactly. More likely, my problem is laziness. It’s not so much that I can’t write and it is that I don’t really want to write enough to convince myself to do it. I know if I could just get myself to write five pages, I could write fifty pages. And if I can write fifty pages I can write 200 pages.
Aside from my own lack of desire to write, I am having trouble coming up with a story that interests me enough to engage me in a book-length project and sustain me until the end. One of the key features of the one novel I did complete during NaNoWriMo two years ago was that it was a character driven tale with a lot of dialogue as opposed to a complicated plot-driven novel. I’m trying to come up with a plot that is entertaining enough but also simple enough to complete in 30 days. I’ll give it another week, if I can’t fill some pages by then, I’ll through in the towel.
Racist Old Woman on the Radio
Published October 29th, 2011 | A rainy Saturday afternoon and I am quite bored. I decided I didn’t want to venture out into the cold, icy rain today, so my Saturday activities are cancelled. Nothing to do today except watch TV and play The Sims 3 Pets. There are worse ways to spend a Saturday I suppose (not many ways, I’d venture, but, hey ….)
Supposed to be nice tomorrow. I guess I’ll hit the gym early and stop by Walmart. I need a printer cartridge (although, I doubt I’ll find one since my local Walmart never seems to stock anything but hp ink cartridges).
Anyway, I was listening to this old woman ranting on the radio this morning. One of those It-was-so-much-better-back-in-my-day rants. The gist of her argument was that things were better because families ate meals together and parents were allowed to beat their children, no one questioned authority and minorities knew their place. Yeah, sounds like paradise to me. Then the show’s host starts talking about communism. I only tuned in to here the local weather (so I could decide whether to venture out or not). What I got was an earful of bullshit. Here’s a rule of thumb: you know you’ve lived too long when you think everyone was better off in the bygone past. Not that everything now is so great, but if you add up everything that is good and bad about now and compare it to say, 1950, I thing 2011 might actually come out slightly ahead, which is not to day 1950 wouldn’t be a nice place to visit once in awhile. Just that we should get real. You can’t go back in time, can you? There’s no recreating the past. 1950’s solutions will not solve 2011 problems and old racist conservatives are scary.
