chapter 63: way off track!

day 13 total: 2,488 words.
running total: 10,754 words.

i suck.

i boozed and loozed for days on either side of my birthday, and now i'm about 10,000 words behind where i should be. seriously. as always, i've used my unique talent for making things harder than they have to be. even something as idiotic and difficult as writing a novel in a month.

the good news? i'm good at being an underdog. which is encouraging, because i'm now up a certain creek that you may be aquaintded with, sans paddle.

but i got back on it today, and actually had my most productive day yet.

here's hoping i've got a few more of them in me, cause i now have to average 2,300 words per day to hit my goal.

yikes.

chapter 62: back on track!

day 5 total: 2,180 words.
running total: 8,296 words.

i am finally back on track, after spending the last few days catching up from taking a day off. okay, so i'm technically off by 39 words. whatever.

the plot has started to go in different directions, and i still don't know how i'll get from here to the last sentence of the novel, which i've already thought of...whether it's still the last sentence when i'm done, who can say.

i'm also becoming weird and isolated. even more than usual. i undersand why so many writers have beards now. every time i got to shave, a plot point occurs. are female novelists hairy? this is what passes for non-noveling thought.

clearly, i'm losing it, and we're only five days in. alert the men in the white coats.

onward to 10,002 words!

chapter 61: best day yet!

day four total: 2,440 words.
running total: 6,116 words.

well, i'm slowly getting close to being back on track with my daily averages. i'm only about 500 words behind where i should be now. today (wednesday) was my best day yet, but it sure is hard to catch up. i'll have to duplicate today's ouput to get to the day five goal. it doesn't seem like it when things are going well, but 1,667 words day after day is a blistering pace. and i've only missed one day so far. note to self: no more days off!

it's gotten a lot easier since i actually took time to flesh out the plot. imagine that! i seem to be decent at plot, but bad at character and dialogue. meh, whatever. see no evil, hear no evil.

the words are getting on the page. that's the goal.

onward to 8,335 words!

chapter 60: the plot thickens

day three total: 1,987 words.
running total: 3,676 words.

ok, so i'm a little short of my three day goal of 5,001 words, but considering i didn't write at all on day two, it's not too bad.

i was tired when i came home from work tuesday, so i thought i'd take a little, 12 hour nap. so i screwed up there, but i recovered nicely on wednesday. by the time i'd scratched out a painful 600 words in the morning going on afternoon, i had a massive plot problem. scary when it's only day three, but i managed to pound out another 1,400 words and got back in the swing.

my plot is now wide open, i have the main characters established and evolving, and i even have a couple subplots brewing. i won't say it's great writing. i honestly can't tell, but it's not a bad story. feels awesome to solve my first problem.

onward to 6,668 words, my day four destination!

chapter 59: day one, and all's well. sort of.

day 1: 1689 words.

ack. yes, ack.

after working a full day at the job, i have managed to focus my mental energy on getting my novel rolling and reached my daily quota of 1,667 words. i even surpassed in by 22 words...killed it!

i now have two characters, the scene partly established, and some admittedly hackneyed prose. it was somewhat more difficult than i thought it'd be to shut off my angry internal censor, though. he's clearly not happy that i'm letting myself suck. i don't deal well with sucking.

but the point of this excercise is to get the words down on paper, so i guess i've reached my goal.

here's hoping it comes easier and gets better on day two.

ps - shut up, brain.
pps - if anyone knows a good character name for a clumsy, clueless, do-gooding journalist who's in over his head in africa, i'm taking suggestions.
ppps - the first person to suggest "Brennan Leffler" gets hit with a barrage of obscenities.

chapter 58: three, two, oooooone

we're now t-minus three days and counting until my writing rocket ship blasts off, and i can't believe how antsy i am to get started.

top five awesome things about writing a novel:

5. slipping the phrase "my novel" into casual conversation.

4. letting my wacky personality out of its cage, and not worrying about facts getting in the way of a good story.

3. dressing like a slob and being called "eccentric" instead of "freak".

2. basking in the adoration of my many, many fans of the female persuasion.

1. delusions of grandeur.

chapter 57: me and ernest

yup, i'm back, with a new, bigger (and possibly even more foolish) adventure. starting november 1st, i will start on the road to fulfilling a lifelong goal of writing a novel. like many people, i've wanted to do this for a long time. i've even started a few times, but never finished for various reasons. this time, it's personal.

not only will i start this novel on november 1st, but i will also finish it by the end of the calendar month. impressive, no?

it's part of national novel writing month, a novel in a month contest...that you guessed it, challenges you to write...a novel in a month.

i know you're all excited, i can already hear the buzz building. to do this, i will have to write 1,667 words a day. and no, you can't read it until it comes out in print...no doubt a bestseller.

but i will be posting updates, word counts, psychotic rantings as the month grows shorter, my beard grows thicker, and my sanity wears thinner.

so follow along, it's gonna be a helluva ride.

ps - i apologize in advance for any jerkish leanings i might display throughout november.

chapter 56: jumping the celebrity death shark

we've covered a lot of celebrity news lately.

yes, yes i know...the people wanna see every little detail of the last chapter of the lurid book that contained michael jackson's story. don't lie, you've been watching.

it's the dream "i gotta see that" story.

the mystery death.

the drugs.

the sex (alleged sex, ahem).

the family feud.

the creepy shots of a procession rolling down the highway in a bzarro version of the oj simpson slo-mo getaway. and inside one of the vehicles, a coffin that may contain a body or cinderblocks!

ok yes, the spellbinding talent and showmanship. there was that for sure.

but it's been nearly two weeks. enough already. there are wars going on. real people dying.

for mj's tragic upbringing early, the isolation when he got famous, then jealous scavenging later by his own family, up to and including his apparently self-destructive death (i'm looking at you joe jackson, plugging your label) i actually felt terrible for him. it's the classic rags-riches-rags story of fame. it's a good ole rock and roll flameout.

but it's becoming an ugly, self-perpetuating mess, and i blame the family. i find almost all of them mildly off-putting to outright despicable, and now that the story's basically dead, we're giving this strange brood exactly what they want. fame.

it would drive me completely stark-raving mad if it weren't for completely ridiculous things like this -- proving that yes, we are going to hell in a handbasket. but it's still absurdly amusing.

warning: the following rap tribute contains language you may find offensive. it contains a low talent threshold, which you may also find offensive. it contains a pro basketball player rapping. badly.

chapter 55: my canada

i have a confession to make: i hate crowds. i usually avoid big events, because i generally don't like to be stuck in huge throngs of people. there's something about losing my personal space that rubs me wrong.

i've always been a bit of a loner...and i guess that's part of what i love about canada; the country is so big, there's usually more than enough space for everyone, even in big cities. you can always find a tranquil spot with a stunning view and just sit and think quietly and reflect on the nearly never-ending beauty in front of you.

it's crowded in the west end today. people everywhere. restaurants, bars, shops, beaches, sidewalks, buses...everything is packed.

but today i don't mind.

i look around and see the whole world. i hear different languages, see different skin colours, smell different aromas. everyone is here, and nobody looks out of place. if i didn't know better, i wouldn't really be sure who belongs and who doesn't. but, like sherlock holmes and the dog that wasn't barking, that's the giveaway.

everyone i see has as much right to be here as the next person. nobody's trying to make the chattering koreans speak english. nobody's getting mad at the slow walking indian family. nobody's telling the muslims to take off their traditional coverings. nobody's telling the panhandlers to get off the sidewalk. nobody's telling the obnoxious white teenage suburbanites to go back to surrey, even though some are no doubt thinking it.

look, i've been some places, and i've seen some things, and that kind of freedom just doesn't exist anywhere else. is it perfect? no. but it's as close as it gets on this earth.

that's my country, or should i say our country. because we all own it...miraculously, in what's often a hard, selfish, hateful world, we've learned how to share.

happy birthday canada.

chapter 54: my africa

congratulations to the black star nation of africa, and the continent's shining star of democracy. hey, it's a start!

Ghana's Example
How one African nation has made democracy work

Friday, January 9, 2009; Page A16
AFRICAN POLITICS were shaped in the past year by two disastrous presidential elections -- that of Kenya in December 2007, which ended in a fraud-marred impasse and triggered ethnic violence in which more than 1,000 people died; and Robert Mugabe's first-round defeat and second-round theft of a Zimbabwean poll, which has prompted a catastrophic national collapse. But democracy in Africa is not dead, as the small but influential nation of Ghana demonstrated over the past month. Its two-round election for president ended with a razor-thin margin of victory for the opposition candidate. There was no major fraud or violence: The winning candidate, John Atta Mills, promised to "be president for all"; his opponent, Nana Akufo-Addo, accepted defeat and publicly congratulated his opponent.
On being sworn in Wednesday, Mr. Atta Mills became the second opposition candidate to peacefully succeed an elected president since Ghana returned to democracy in 1992. A pioneer of Africa's independence movement in the 1960s, Ghana is the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to accomplish that political feat. For the rest of the continent -- including its giant and perpetually unstable neighbor, Nigeria -- Ghana offers a demonstration that such political maturity pays off. Ghana's average annual growth rate of 5.6 percent during the past six years has been one of Africa's highest, and the country has become a favorite of foreign investors as well as donors.
Mr. Atta Mills faces serious challenges, including growing transshipment of cocaine through Ghana to Europe -- and the corruption that the drug trafficking has engendered. He will also need to skillfully manage the country's recently discovered offshore oil, which could propel Ghana to greater prosperity or mire it in the political and economic diseases that afflict Nigeria and other petro-states. For now, however, the new president and his country can bask in the congratulations that have poured in from the European Union, the United Nations and the United States -- not to mention from Ghana's neighbors. "The conduct of the people of Ghana provides a rare example of democracy at work in Africa," said Kenya's prime minister, Raila Odinga. As Mr. Odinga knows all too well, it's an example from which Kenya, Zimbabwe and other states could learn.